


100 Themes in Lokidom

by startraveller776



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Ficlet Collection, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2020-09-26 23:23:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 36,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20397862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startraveller776/pseuds/startraveller776
Summary: Unrelated drabbles, ficlets, and one shots centered on the pairing of Loki and Jane Foster. Various genres and ratings. (Heed the ratings and warnings, if any, in the notes of each chapter, please.)





	1. Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> **Rating:** PG/K+  
**Genre:** Alternate Universe

**COMFORT**

Loki wakes to the crash of thunder, the blinding flash of lightening. _Rebirth_ has begun in earnest, the _líf skepna_ swooping over the Realm Eternal in a torrent of wind and rain. He glances toward the windows, watches the faint dots glowing like starlight dance and swirl on the violent current of air. As a boy, he’d stay up the first night of the season, curled up in a blanket as he followed the frenetic choreography of the tiny things. But like so many other childhood wonders, the awe has grown thin—a shadow of emotion. He breathes a sigh, flicking a thread of _seidr_ toward the drapes to draw them closed.

A gasp whispers in his room, and he sits up, lanterns burning bright in answer to his will. His brows pinch together when his gaze finds Jane Foster standing inside of his door. The Midgardian—_former_ Midgardian, he corrects himself—is diminutive in her shift, hugging herself and staring back at him with wide eyes. He’s curious at her presence. She was sent to Asgard sometime ago, one of the tributes offered up by her realm, and the first Gifted of her kind in centuries. His mother saw to the young woman’s tutelage. Loki saw fit to make her life _exciting_. Just a bit of harmless fun, though Jane was rather vehemently disinclined to agree. Not that all of their interactions were adversarial. The wisp had earned some measure of respect from him, even if the feeling was, apparently, far from mutual.

Which begs the question: “Is there something you need?” He keeps his tone light, playful—perhaps a little dangerous because this is the mask he wears perpetually. His gleaming shield in the bellicose society in which he was reared.

“I…” She jumps at the boom of thunder, gaze darting toward the windows. “I, uh…” Words appear to have failed her, and he measures her with a shrewd look.

“Could it be,” he says with a viperous grin as he draws out of bed, “that the dauntless Jane Foster is _frightened_?” He raises a brow as she lifts her chin defiantly and yet makes no argument. “Do they not have storms in the mortal realm?”

She swallows thickly. “They do, but…” She bites her lip, again glancing toward the unseen gale outside. “They give me nightmares.” The admission is hardly audible.

His smile falls away, tips downward in frown. He doesn’t intend for his confusion to bleed through the mask, but he cannot trace the path of her logic. If she is frightened, why turn to him? She has other friends. That word clenches white-knuckled in his chest when he thinks of his brother—the pillar of all things Aesir who collects Jane’s shining smiles and glittery laughter like maiden favors. Indeed, Loki is hardly suited for this role of comforter.

He takes a step toward her, then another until the distance between them is negligible, until she has to crane her neck to hold his gaze. “What could you possibly desire from the God of Mischief, I wonder.”

Ah, there it is. The steel beneath her fear as a hint of a glower washes over her features. He recalls how fragile she had seemed when she first stood at the foot of Odin’s throne. How boring Loki thought she would be. Merely another human oblation to appease the immortal protectors of Yggdrasil. She has deftly proven him wrong and continues to do so—a fact which delights him, though he keeps the truth of it hidden well.

“Though I am a skilled sorcerer,” he says when she makes no reply, “I cannot rein in the _líf skepna_. Even I won’t risk their ire.”

She shakes her head. “No, that’s not—” She sucks in a breath. “I just don’t want to be alone. Can I… Can I sleep here tonight?”

What a strange request. “Why not Thor?” Loki asks, though he can’t be sure he wants the answer.

Jane’s mouth curls in a rueful grin. “Because he will take it as an invitation for something I have no intention of giving him.”

“And you think I won’t?” Loki gives her a feral smile because she is a fool if she believes him to be less of a threat than his brother.

“I don’t know,” she begins but the rest of her reply is cut off by reverberating thunderbolt. She sways toward him as though she might leap into his arms, but she holds her ground. “I’m willing to risk it with you.”

He ponders the implications of her statement. Does she think him a fangless beast? Or is she not opposed to the notion of giving him what she won’t give Thor? Though Loki hasn’t considered the latter before—not truly—he finds the thought to be of some interest to him now. She’s never shown any indication that she has a preference for him, but who is he to debate such needless details? This is quite the fascinating turn of events.

He steps to the side, gestures toward his bed. “By all means, stay.”

She sags a hairsbreadth in obvious relief. “Thank you.”

Later, when the roar of thunder seems unrelenting, she grasps his hand. She’s cold, quaking, and he tugs her toward him, cocoons her against his chest. Perhaps he can play the comforter, though he’s hardly altruistic. No, he thinks as he inhales the scent of blossoms and honey in her hair, this is the start of an excellent new diversion. After all, there are many nights of _Rebirth_ yet.

He falls asleep with a mouth stretched in a wide grin.

**~FIN~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** There's now a sequel to this piece: [Peace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20397862/chapters/54681124). XD


	2. Never Cross a Librarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every night, she rushes into his library, pulls out stacks of books, and then leaves a mess for him to clean up. Tonight, he's getting revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** PG/K+  
**Genre:** Non-magical Modern AU, Humor

**NEVER CROSS A LIBRARIAN**

She’s a slob. A hopeless, inconsiderate slob, and it drives him mad.

Every night, she rushes into his library, pulls out books on astronomy, physics, historical weather patterns. She takes over one of the larger tables, papers and tomes in messy stacks (how the devil does she get any actual research done being so disorganized?) as she flips through pages and scribbles illegible notes in a leather notebook.

And when she’s finished, she leaves. Without putting a single book back. Not even to the return cart. As if he’s got nothing better to do than clean up after her. (There’s more to being a librarian than putting books on shelves, she might be shocked to learn.)

It’s unconscionable, and Loki’s had enough.

He waits, legs propped up on his desk, _War and Peace_ open in his lap, for her to make her nightly appearance. She bursts through the doors at 10:20 p.m. like clockwork, flying toward her favorite stacks like the mini-tornado she is. He ticks off the seconds until—ah, there it is. That lovely curse of frustration coming from the physics section. Oh, and another one two seconds later when she hits the astronomy shelves.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six—

“Hi,” she says, patting a hand against his desk. “Excuse me.”

He turns a page in his book before looking up at her with a polite smile. “Yes?”

Her eyes widen fractionally, and he wonders briefly if he’s inadvertently inspired a sexy librarian fantasy. (He _is_ quite dashing.) She clears her throat. “There’s a problem with some books.”

He feigns concern. “Oh? What seems to be the trouble?”

"They’re missing. All of them.” She sounds just the littlest bit desperate, and he likes it.

“_All_ of them?” he asks, leaning back to glance past her at the well-stocked library (minus two sections).

She blushes. “No, I mean… The physics and astronomy books are gone.”

“That _is_ odd,” he agrees with a grave nod. “Perhaps they’re all out at the moment. You can check back with us tomorrow.”

“But I can’t wait until…” She trails off as her gaze passes over him to the neatly stacked volumes behind his desk. “Wait,” she says, pointing at them, “aren’t those… They are!”

He keeps his expression neutral, though it is a challenge. “I beg your pardon?”

“The books! From the shelves!” she hisses. “They’re right there!”

He makes a show of turning around. “Oh, yes. Those,” he says, once again giving her his full attention. “I’m afraid those are reserved.”

“They’re _all_ reserved?” Her question drips with disbelief.

“Every one.” He turns back to his novel, waiting for—

“By who?”

“Whom,” he corrects, enjoying the pretty shade of red that colors her cheeks. She’s rather attractive when she’s angry, he decides. Perfect fodder for a racy student fantasy—if he went in for that sort of thing. (He didn’t. Usually.)

She lets out a noise of exasperation. “By _whom_, then?”

“Me.”

She gapes at him. “You?” And then: “You! Why would you take every physics and astronomy book?”

He shrugs. “Perhaps I’ve developed a passion for those particular subjects.”

“Bullshit!”

He shushes her with a finger against his mouth. “Inside voice, please.”

She looks as though she’s on the verge of leaping over the desk and strangling him, and he has to grit his teeth to keep from laughing. This is far more entertaining than he anticipated. (Who knew the mousy researcher was such a firebrand? He idly wonders what other buttons she has that he can push.)

“I’m so going to file a complaint,” she says. “Where’s your superior?”

“In bed, I should think,” he replies with a glance at his watch. “She’ll be in at seven in the morning, if you would care to wait.”

She glares at him. (Oh, yes. Quite beautiful when in a fit of temper.) “Fine. What’s it going to take to get the books back?”

He rubs his thumb across his lips. “I’ll give them to you on one condition.”

She scowls, but nods for him to go on.

“You shelve them. Every single one—in proper order”

She gives him a flat look. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m quite serious,” he says with a grin. “You do know how the Dewey Decimal System works, don’t you? Or do you need a lesson?”

Her flat look becomes flatter as she folds her arms across her chest. “Do you randomly torture grad students when you’re bored, or am I just that special?”

“Most definitely the latter.” He extricates his legs from the desk and leans forward with a smirk. “You see, Miss…”

It’s a beat before she fills in the blank for him. “Foster. Jane Foster.”

“Miss Foster,” he repeats, “I have my doubts as to whether you are, in fact, capable of re-shelving books. The evidence up until now has been less than favorable on your behalf.”

Her mouth falls open in outrage. “_That’s_ why you’re doing this? Because I didn’t put a few measly books away?”

He could argue that her “few measly books” (few? _hardly_) keep him well past his shift every night, but being reasonable is so dreadfully dull. Instead, he looks at his watch again. “You best get to it if you want to get any studying done before the library closes.”

Her face turns a brilliant shade of crimson, and he gives her his winningest smile. “Go on, then.”

With a huff, she steps around the desk and starts filling the empty cart he so generously left out for her. “This isn’t over,” she says as she takes the first batch of books back to where they belong.

He laughs. Oh, no. It most certainly isn’t over, Jane Foster.

**~FIN~**


	3. Seeing Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki has returned home from many years spent studying magic under the Light Elves, and he finds much has changed during his absence—none of it to his liking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** PG-13/T  
**Genre:** Alternate Universe

**SEEING RED**

* * *

_We were raised together. We played together. We fought together. Do you remember none of that?_

* * *

How had he lost the thread of this story?

Her laughter fluttered across the banquet table like a vibrant butterfly—a thing of beauty meant not for him, but his brother. She looked down shyly, her cheeks were the color of apple blossoms as her slender fingers brushed against his brother’s arm, and Loki cursed the wide smile Thor gave her in return. When had this happened? This burgeoning affection between them? Hadn’t Thor always viewed Jane as an annoying little sister?

Had Loki been truly gone so long? Long enough for Jane to have grown from gangly girl to woman. Long enough for Thor to notice the transformation.

Loki stood up, ignoring his mother’s surprised exclamation as he exited the hall with a swift, determined step. Betrayal entwined around his heart like a noxious vine, suffocating him. Blood pounded hot in his veins and he didn’t know how to quell this inexplicable rage. He had no claim on her, no flimsy promises born of puerile romance. She’d been a friend—a dear one. She was the orphan taken from Midgard because of her gift—a ward of the royal family and apprentice to Heimdall. She had never belonged to Loki. And yet…

And yet as he laid eyes on her for the first time in years, his every sinew, every bone said otherwise.

He recalled the twin braids framing her young face when the guards escorted her to the throne room. He recalled the tracks her tears made on her grimy cheeks as she glared defiantly up at the Allfather and demanded to be returned to her home. He recalled years of chasing her delighted squeals in the gardens, the untold number of secrets they shared beneath Idun’s tree, and the way she clung to him before he left for Alfheim. She was woven into the fabric of the man he had become as inextricably as his brother, his mother, his father.

But apparently his mark on her life had not been quite so indelible.

“Loki!”

He had been so close to escaping her, mere footsteps from his chambers where he could lock out the way she smiled at his brother. He wanted to ignore her, but the supplication in her voice was a fisherman’s hook, tearing at his heart. When had she become his weakness?

Hands clenched into fists, he turned to her, adorning a pleasant demeanor like a master artisan’s mask. He forced an air of disinterest as his gaze traveled from her flushed cheeks to her diminutive hands picking at the fabric of her gown—a habit she evidently had not grown out of.

“Yes?” he asked, raising a brow.

She bit her lip and shook her head. “You rushed out in the middle of the celebration.”

“I’m afraid I’m still tired from the journey home.” The lie fell from his lips without thought, and he was unsettled by the ease of it. He had never deceived her before. There had never been a need.

She nodded with a sympathetic smile. “Makes sense, I suppose. But you left before we had a chance to talk.”

Talk? With her? Not when his only desire was to impale Thor with one of his daggers and lash out at her with angry invectives. He looked over her head in the unconscious hope that someone or something would interrupt this uncomfortable encounter. “We can speak another time, perhaps.” Perhaps never.

“Right. Of course. You’re tired.” She sighed, stepping closer. “It’s just I’ve missed you so much, and I wanted to hear all about…” She trailed off with a weak laugh. “You’ve gotten so tall.”

“Yes,” he agreed, the word leaving the cool tang of bitterness on his tongue. “It would seem much has changed during my absence.”

Her eyes narrowed briefly, as though she saw the prickly burr beneath his words and chose to ignore it. “You were gone a long time.”

"I was.”

Silence fell like winter snow between them, beautiful and cold, as he held her gaze. He dared her to speak what lay unspoken between them. To admit that she had chosen the brother who had never known her, never loved her as he had.

Her chin dropped, and his challenge remained unmet. “I should let you rest,” she said, her voice above a whisper.

“Then I bid you good evening, Jane.” He gave her stiff bow, an icy smile frozen on his lips as she made her retreat.

* * *

_I’m not your brother. I never was._

* * *

Hours became days became weeks as the blackened pinprick of hatred festered in his chest, though he kept it hidden well under the veneer of pleasant formalities. He was never unkind—not overtly. But if Thor’s sword inexplicably broke in the practice yards, allowing Sif’s weapon to hit its mark too hard? Well, Loki did not mourn. Neither did he feel any pity for the trouble which seemed to befall the golden prince of Asgard at every turn. The fool never suspected that the same beloved brother who consoled him in his woes was the very one creating them.

And Jane. Oh, dear, sweet Jane received a very special brand of Loki’s vengeance. And nothing so pithy as the mischief he met against Thor.

Her, he erased entirely from his life—more deftly than she had him. He returned each of her hopeful greetings with indifference, as if she were some simple serving girl whose name he never bothered to remember. At the banquet tables, when she would entreat him to join the others in nostalgic recounting of childhood exploits, he recalled only those capers which she had no part in. He was terribly attentive to the buxom brunette who poured his wine—or any beautiful woman within Jane’s purview who was desperate for the prestige of sharing the black prince’s bed.

He wore her disappointments, her pain like favors bestowed from a fair maiden—though her suffering would never equal his.

“Stop this foolishness, Loki.”

Frigga came to his rooms one evening, dismissing his latest conquest with an imperial glare. She closed the door behind the harried girl, and turned to her son, veiled anger shining in her eyes. Eyes he once believed he had inherited from her. He knew better now.

“Foolishness?” came his stolid reply as he leaned against the wall, arms folded over his bare chest.

“Do not pretend to be ignorant,” she returned in cool tones. “You play a dangerous game, son.”

He raised a brow, measuring his reply to match the frost in her warning. “No more dangerous than stealing a Jötunn babe and raising him to believe he is a true Aesir—a prince, even.”

Shock flared across her features before she donned her regal façade. “You _are_ a prince.”

His smile was dour as he agreed. “Oh, yes. But not a prince of Asgard.” He straightened, disdain coiling through his body. “Did you believe I could spend so many years deep in my studies of sorcery and _not_ discover my true nature? When I did, everything made sense. Why Thor was always so favored. Why _Odin_ kept me at arm’s length all these years.”

He took a step toward her, using his greater height to drive the point home. “And then I remembered how often Odin told us that Thor and I were both born to be kings. It occurred to me that I was not the offspring of some common Frost Giant clan. Perhaps my birth was royal, after all.”

“Loki—”

“Tell me, _Mother_,” he spoke over her. “How long did you intend to keep up the ruse? Another decade? Millennia? What was the plan? To rear the Jötunn child in the Aesir ways, and then send him back to that bleak realm to overthrow his own father? To become a puppet king, bending to the great Allfather’s whims?” He advanced on her, forcing her to step back from him. “Or has the ax been ever at my neck? The threat to keep Laufey and his barbaric minions tamed?”

“You were abandoned,” Frigga whispered. Tears glittered on her lashes. “Left for dead when the battle was over. And your father took pity on you—”

“Lies!” hissed Loki, brushing her assertions away with a violent wave of his hand. “I know the man who calls himself my father, and he never does anything without a purpose.” Emotion cracked at the edges his voice, but he swallowed it back. He had imagined this confrontation a thousand times, and he would not let her see how thoroughly their deception had fractured him.

“Believe what you will,” she said, “but from the first moment I held you in my arms, you have been _my_ son.”

Her frank confession stole the air from the room, and it was a hundredfold worse than the horror of watching his arm change from the pale flesh of an Asgardian to an unnatural azure. Stratagems, he understood—for that was the way of the crown. He might even be able to forgive being made part of Odin’s machinations one day.

But she claimed to love the monster he was raised to hate, and an appropriate response failed him.

“So you say.” The words were thick in his mouth as he opened the door. “I will take your most graciously offered counsel under advisement.”

Anguish contorted her lovely features, and she pressed her fingers against his cheek. “Hate your father and I if you must, but Thor and Jane are innocents in this.” She searched his face with pleading eyes. “I know you love her. I’ve always known. Don’t let your resentment destroy any hope you have with her.”

“We’re finished,” he said in a throaty growl. “Leave.”

She offered him a solemn nod before gliding out of his chambers.

* * *

_Enough. No more illusions._

* * *

Jane found him in the gardens they used to play in as children. He sat across a stone bench, an ancient tome propped against his knees as he perused the angular runes on its sepia pages. The snap of a twig marked her approach, and he remained where he was; the feint of his indifference had begun to wear thin.

“Jane.” He acknowledged her presence in a toneless voice without looking up.

She settled on the far end of the bench, crossing her petite legs beneath her skirts like she had as a girl. “Do you remember when we made butterflies out of parchment, and you made them all fly?”

The memory involuntarily drifted to the surface and refused to be discarded. He recalled with painful clarity the way her copper eyes had widened with unabashed awe. The whisper of fluttering paper wings echoed in his ears with the bells of her youthful laughter. She had never belittled his gift—never teased him as Thor and his insipid friends had, never made him feel weak because he was not as physically imposing as his brother—and he had once loved her for it.

“What of it?” he said, turning a page in his book though he had stopped reading from the moment of her arrival.

“Sometimes…” she began, but fell silent for several heartbeats. “Sometimes, I wish we could go back to those simpler days.”

He looked up at her and saw regret and wistfulness in her beautiful face. He hated the ache constricting his heart in response. Her cruelty would be everlasting, wouldn’t it?

“Why?” he asked.

“Because,” she said, bringing her doleful gaze to meet his, “you were my friend then.”

The rage he kept perpetually suppressed sparked to life like dry tinder. “And what need have you of my friendship, Jane, when you have my brother’s?”

Hurt parted her lips, drew her brows together. “You’re being unfair.”

“Am I?” He stared at her with cold, flat eyes.

“Yes!” She twisted her body to face him fully, and he saw the ghost of the defiant little girl standing before a powerful king, demanding her freedom. “You were my only friend and you abandoned me!”

“Not by choice!” he yelled, unable to stay the violent tide of anger, bitterness, and hostility. The book dropped unseen to the ground as he rose from the bench. “How long before you turned to my brother for comfort? How long have you been warming his bed?” Each question was a poisoned dagger meant to slice her, to eviscerate her heart as she had his.

She stood, cheeks flushed with answering fury. “How dare you! For months I had no one to talk to, and he finally had compassion on—”

“_Enough!_”

He couldn’t bear to hear another word. Not of his ever heroic, shining brother—the only _true_ son of Odin—coming to the rescue of poor little lonely Jane. She wanted sympathy for _her_ plight? What of the young man who, far from the only home he’d ever known, discovered his entire existence had been crafted from duplicity? Where was his savior then? And when he was finally allowed to return to the only person he trusted, he discovered how little he meant to her. He had nothing.

No, he would not offer her any pity.

He retreated behind his mental barricades, giving her a malicious smile. “Don’t be greedy, Jane. You cannot have both Thor _and_ myself. One prince is catch enough for any woman, and far more than an orphan from Midgard could ever hope for.”

Her hands curled into fists, and he welcomed whatever feeble blow she might attempt to mete against him. None came. No flying hand, no kick, no screaming insults.

Instead, she shook her head. “You fool. You mad fool.” She pinned him with glassy eyes. “I would have chosen you over Thor a thousand times. I lived for every letter you sent and read each one until the ink faded beneath my fingertips. I wanted so desperately to run to you at the reception and fling my arms around you because my world had become right again.”

He opened his mouth, but his tongue refused to shape words. Anything to stop this cutting indictment against him.

“You left the banquet without saying a single word to me,” she continued, tears falling in thick rivulets down her face. “I wanted to believe you when you said you were tired, when you promised to speak with me another time. But that time never came. Instead, you flaunted your trysts for all to see, and you treated me like some stranger you had no desire to know.”

She took a step back, shaking her head again. “Thor has only ever been a friend. And now, you aren’t even that to me.”

She left him in the gardens alone with the dying embers of his misplaced ire.

* * *

_Always so perceptive about everyone but yourself._

* * *

He stopped taking his meals in the banquet hall, unable to face the raw accusation in Jane’s eyes. He shrugged off the salacious advances from scheming courtiers, the hungry looks from serving girls, until he was as invisible to them as they were to him. He no longer tormented Thor with spiteful pranks, but instead wandered the gilded palace, directionless without the canker of his hatred.

Odin had stolen his life. But he had crushed the shattered vestiges with the heel of his own boot.

Like Jane, he wished he could reverse time, to return to that moment when he mistook the smile Thor gave her as something more than kindness. To remove the tint of the Allfather’s betrayal from his eyes as he looked on his dearest friend.

But there was no going back and untangling the barbed knot he had made of things.

He thought of leaving, of returning to Alfheim or exploring the nine realms, but fear kept him in Asgard. Fear that she would find another to love, forever barring him from earning back her affections—despite disconsolate knowledge that he had no hope of redemption.

He was hers, even if she would never be his.

Frigga crossed the threshold into his rooms once more with a mouth slashed in steely determination, glaring at his listless form in a cushioned armchair.

“Is this the son I raised?” she queried. “One who becomes a deserter at the first hint of a formidable foe?”

“I’m not your son,” he muttered, unable to put the required venom into his words just as he was unable to rise to meet her trenchant questions head on.

“You _are_ my son,” she said, her tone as unbending as a broadsword. “And _my_ son has never fled from a challenge—no matter how great.”

He made a derisive noise and looked up, lips curled in a caustic grin. “And how am I to conquer this impossible task?”

She stared him down, undaunted by his acrimony. “By being _relentless_.”

Her words rang through his mind like a deafening gong. He could not escape them, not in the vast palace library, not while riding along the seashore, not in the bawdy tavern where he drank himself unconscious. Relentless. Relentless. Relentless. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to scream. He thought he was going mad.

He found himself in the banquet hall once more, only half aware of the companionable slap his brother gave him as he took his seat. Frigga gave him a nod with the barest hint of approval, and he was bothered by how much it moved him. He didn’t recall the conversations throughout the meal, nor did he notice the well-endowed servant who poured his wine.

There was only Jane and the furtive, scarred glances she cast in his direction. Perhaps he viewed her from the colored vantage of his desperation, but her wide eyes seemed to beg him to set right again what he had upended.

It was the impetus he needed.

The next morning she stepped tentatively into the gardens, clutching a slip of crinkled parchment in her hand. He watched her from the shadow of Idun’s tree, seeing both the beauty she had become and the little girl with straw braids who snuck tarts from the kitchen with him.

“Loki?” There was a tremor in her voice as though she feared some malevolent trickery from him. “You asked me to come and I am here.”

He didn’t answer her, but flicked his wrists, sending an imperceptible tendril of magic throughout the garden. Thousands upon thousands of paper butterflies shot up around her, looping through the air in gentle spirals. Choked laughter escaped from her just before her hands flew to her mouth. She spun in a languid circle and captured one with agile fingers.

He took measured, ambling steps toward her, the butterflies moving out of his path like parting drapes. She watched his approach with an expression full of awe and hope so acute, it took his breath away. He stopped just within arm’s reach of her, his heart galloping in his chest as he smoothed a thumb across her cheek, brushing away the tear which had fallen there.

“Don’t weep, Jane,” he murmured.

She let out another half-sob, half-laugh as if his request was ridiculous, and he smiled.

“What I’ve done has been unforgiveable,” he said, “but I promise, from now to the end of time, that every day with me will be as simple as those of our childhood—if you’ll but love me again.”

His words were met with raspy flutter of wings and trepidation began to churn in his stomach. His instinct was to back away, to hide in his chamber and lick his wounds, but Frigga’s admonition rooted him to the ground.

_Relentless_.

He cradled Jane’s face with his long fingers and pressed his forehead to hers. “Please,” he whispered, allowing despair to seep into his tone. “I know I’m undeserving, but please choose me, Jane.”

She sucked in a shuddering breath and exhaled a single word. “Yes.”

Elation swelled in his chest as he pulled her into his arms—where the curve of her fit against the angles of him, where she belonged. He pressed his lips against hers, tasting her as he had wanted to months before. The butterflies swarmed around them, veiling them as Jane returned his hungry kiss with fervor.

* * *

_I only wanted to protect you from the truth._

* * *

Frigga stood beside her husband as they witnessed the scene below.

“Just as I foretold when he was a babe,” she murmured when Loki enveloped Jane in a crushing embrace. “We would make an enemy of our son, and the girl would make him our ally once more.”

Odin nodded. “You are as wise as ever, my wife.”

He offered her an arm, and they walked back inside together.

**~FIN~**


	4. Foreign

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane Foster bumps into a tall dark stranger on the streets of Puente Antiguo, not knowing he’s come to make good on an old promise. (Post-Avengers. Dark!Loki.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T  
Genre: Drama, Angst, Dark

**FOREIGN**

“No, Darcy. You can’t buy a new iPod with the grant money.” Jane rolls her eyes as she hurries down the sidewalk. She cradles the cell phone between her shoulder and ear as she totes an overfull box of equipment.

“Oh, come on!” comes Darcy’s whine on the other end of the call. “Music is, like, integral to my process. It’ll make me a more efficient assistant. It’s a total write-off.”

“Darcy,” Jane warns.

“Fine. Whatever.” Darcy lets out an exaggerated sigh. “I’ll see you next month—if my mother hasn’t kidnapped me and forced me to marry some doctor.”

“Bye, Darcy.” Jane rolls her eyes again as the line goes dead.

Not for the first time, she wonders what it would be like to have an assistant who actually takes work seriously. SHIELD offered, but then after what Darcy and Jane had been through together, Jane can’t imagine not having her sarcastic sidekick— no matter how she might fantasize otherwise.

The cell phone begins to slide from her shoulder and she instinctively raises a hand to catch it. The box in her arms falls to the concrete with a loud crash, sending the electronic parts flying. Unable to stop her forward momentum, Jane flings her arms outward to brace for impact.

She collides instead with another body.

A hand captures her wrist just before she tumbles over. “Sorry!” She squints up at her savior as an embarrassed blush heats her cheeks. He’s tall and lean, wearing a black three-piece suit with the coat slung over his shoulder. The cuffs of his white shirt are rolled up to his elbows, and she notices oddly that the bottom button of his vest is undone.

“Miss Foster?”

She looks up at the deep and unfamiliar timbre, guessing British by his accent. His long face—all planes and angles, framed by glossy shoulder-length black hair—makes her think of an ethereal fairytale being. He’s not handsome in the classical sense, not like Thor. (No, don’t think of him.) A more fitting descriptor for this stranger is beautiful. But not effeminate. There is something in his intense gaze that tells her he is every bit as masculine as a blond demigod she is most emphatically not thinking about right now.

A moment later, she registers that the dark-haired man has said her name. She frowns, worried that SHIELD is attempting to foist another babysitter on her. Since Erik’s sabbatical to Norway, Fury seemed to think Jane incapable of handling her research on her own.

She eyes the man before her. “Do I know you?” She doesn’t, but she wants to hear whatever lie he will come up with.

“I don’t believe you do, no.” He raises a brow and points to the upended box on the ground. “Foster” is scrawled in huge block letters across the side, and Jane feels a little foolish for being suspicious.

“Oh, right.” She half smiles, half grimaces. “Foster. Yeah, that’s me. Jane Foster.” She bends over to pick up the box and its contents. “I’m so sorry for all of this—” She pauses, hoping he’ll fill in the blank with his name. When he says nothing, she continues on, even more flustered.

“Anyway, I can be a bit of a klutz sometimes.” _Stop babbling, Jane. Just shut up before you can say something really stupid._ Numbers and star charts she’s good with. People? Not quite as good. Really attractive foreign guys? Not good at all.

He is so quiet, at first she thinks he might have walked away. But then he squats down and retrieves a computer fan from the ground, studying it with a frown. “Yours, I presume,” He holds it out to her.

“Yes.” She takes it from him, unsure of what to say next. The way he stares at her with those pale eyes— not quite green, not quite blue—unsettles her. For a giddy heartbeat, she wonders if he’s trying to read her mind. Chills prickle across her skin.

“So, um, thanks,” she says, trying to fill up the awkward silence. She brushes a strand of her hair behind her ear and he follows the movement with the tilt of his head. “Okay. I guess…goodbye?” She flashes what she hopes is a smile and picks up her box.

His smooth fingers are over hers, and the goosebumps tingle back up her arms. “Allow me.” His mouth stretches into a wide grin, bearing perfect white teeth.

There is the tiniest flutter building in her middle—something she hasn’t felt since… _No, don’t think about him_. “It’s okay. I’ve got this. Thanks for the offer, though.”

“It’s true, then,” he says rising with her. “Chivalry has no place in your modern world.”

Jane finds his use of “your” instead of “our” strange but dismisses it. “That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

“I just…” She searches for an answer that sounds reasonably intelligent. “Listen, I don’t know you. And I don’t have the greatest track record with strangers—especially guys who definitely look like they have  
no business hanging around a place like this.” She leaves unsaid that the last visitor they had nearly got the whole town destroyed. Not that it was Thor’s fault—not really.

“A wise course, I’m sure,” the man before her replies. He places his hand on his chest, splaying those long fingers against his black tie. “Lukas. And you are Jane. Are we not acquainted now?”

Jane has no argument against that, though she feels like she should. “Fine. I’ll let you carry my box on one condition.”

He smiles again—an expression which is both disarming and disquieting. “Oh? And what would that be.”

“You have to tell me what you’re doing in Puente Antiguo. Business or pleasure?”

He glances away as he considers her question. “Both,” he says after a protracted silence. “You could say that I’m on a holiday of sorts, but I’m also here to take care of a few…loose ends.”

“That sounds,” Jane replies, frowning, “cryptic.”

He gives her a half-shrug but doesn’t offer further explanation. Instead, he reaches for her bundle and deftly balances it in one arm. “Lead on, fair maiden.”

As they head toward her lab, Jane becomes acutely aware of the stares of the geriatrics sitting on the bench in front of the barber’s shop. Most of the population of Puente Antiguo has come to tenuously accept Jane again in the year and a half since Thor’s visit. But the white-haired set hasn’t forgiven her for bringing a tornado of crazy down on their dusty little haven. And here she is with another outsider.

She glances at Lukas. He wears a hint of a smirk, as if he knows the attention his presence as engendered and he’s amused by it. His tongue sweeps across his bottom lip as he meets her gaze and her stomach ripples. There’s a hunger there, ringing the pupils of his eyes. Wild but restrained like frothy waters beating against a dam. She shrinks away from it as she backs away from him.

His smile broadens a hair before his expression turns blank, guarded. “You still don’t trust me?”

“I still don’t know you.” She points to the rundown building across the street. “That’s me.” The fishbowllike windows of her makeshift lab have been tinted since SHIELD began funding her research. They offered her state-of-the-art facilities as well, but accepting it felt too much like selling out. She clings to the gutted former car showroom as if it’s the last vestige of her scientific independence.

This is where Jane’s encounter with the enigmatic Lukas should end, but he crosses the road before she can retrieve the box from him. Digging into her pocket for her keys, she scrambles after him. When she opens the door, he walks inside without so much as a “by your leave.” Jane huffs at this but doesn’t say anything. He has the air of someone who always gets what he wants, and her earlier misgiving is rekindled.

“Thank you,” she says, taking the box from him and setting it on the ground.

“My pleasure.” He takes in her lab with the slow turn of his head, fingers brushing against the pile of notes scattered across the nearest desk. “What is it you do, Jane Foster?”

The way he says her name, dropping the “r” at the end as if it hadn’t belonged there in the first place… She shakes herself, ignoring the sudden warmth blossoming on her cheeks, and hastily gathers her paperwork out of his reach. “It’s kind of classified.”

He holds up his hands in surrender. “I meant no harm.” Amusement ghosts in the corners of his smile. It’s almost disarming, but not quite.

Silence falls between them, and he begins to meander through her lab, picking up the snow globe Darcy gave her last Christmas as a joke. Lukas turns it over, frowning at the flecks of white swirling in the water. Setting it down, he turns back to Jane.

“I should like to know you better,” he says. It’s not a question; it’s an intention.

“Why?”

He draws closer to her, siphoning the air from the room with each languid footfall. She doesn’t retreat, though. It’s not in her nature to cow to others.

“Because,” he says, grinning again, “you intrigue me. Is that not reason enough?”

She cranes her neck to meet his gaze, her heart rate accelerating at the intensity in his eyes—as if she is all that exists in the universe and he wants to know why. “Coffee?” She blushes at the tremor in her voice.

His brows draw together in a brief furrow. “Coffee,” he repeats the word as though its shape is unnatural on his tongue. “Perhaps, tomorrow.”

Jane nods, not entirely certain why she’s agreeing to this. “So, do you want to meet here or…”

His grin is an incongruous combination of innocence and something predatory. “Don’t worry, Jane,” he says, stepping toward the door. “I’ll find you.”

And then he is gone.

Chills slide over her arms at the promise in his parting words.

* * *

He kisses her after their third date.

It’s not entirely unexpected, but Jane is still taken by surprise when he leans down and brushes his lips against hers. Like a request. Like a warning. She tips up her chin instinctively, leans into him, and feels him smile against her mouth.

As if that simple movement is the permission he needs, his kiss turns consuming. Her entire body becomes a super conductor, lightning dancing across her skin. She has never been the focus of such single-minded desire and a thrill builds in her middle, snaking lower.

They make it inside of her apartment. Only just. She should stop this, tell him to go before they cross this line. But she doesn’t. Because for the first time in eighteen months, she’s not thinking about a golden-haired god who swept out of her life as quickly and unexpectedly as he swept in. There is only Lukas and the press of his lips against her throat, the caress of his fingers beneath the waistband of her jeans.

They leave a trail of discarded clothing as they stumble toward her bedroom. She doesn’t care about the stacks of books on the floor they kick over, the papers fluttering across the carpet, as they crash to her bed. It’s flesh on flesh, mouth on skin.

She closes her eyes as she slips toward blissful oblivion.

Afterward, she rests her head on his chest as he traces designs on her nude back. She is content, more at peace than she has been in… She can’t remember when. Not in the last year.

“When first we met,” Lukas says, his chest vibrating with his deep timbre, “I had believed our encounter would go differently. Vastly so.”

Jane smiles. “Oh?”

“Mmm.” He combs his fingers through her hair. “I like this much better than what I had initially planned.”

“Planned?” Her smile vanishes as a thread of disquiet trembles in her chest.

“I had planned,” he says while continuing his affectionate caress, “to torture you so exquisitely that even Thor would beg for the mercy of your death. But I think I shall make you mine instead.”

Ice crystalizes the blood in her veins. She doesn’t want to believe what she’s hearing. Torture? Thor? Her eyes widen as understanding comes to her piece by terrible piece. She pulls away from him, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders with shaking hands. Swallowing her fear, she says one word.

“Loki.”

He gives her a broad grin. “Very clever, though perhaps not clever soon enough.”

Her breaths come too short, too shallow, stifled by the weight of what he has done—what she has done. But how is he here? She doesn’t realize that she gave voice to the question until he answers.

“How am I here? When I’m supposed to be locked away in the crystal cells of Asgard? Like some dangerous weapon put on display but never admired?” He sits up, still grinning. “But I am, Jane. I am there.”

He brushes the hair from her eyes. “And I am also here. Keeping the promise I made long ago.”

“Get out.” She cringes away from him.

“Please don’t,” Lukas—Loki replies, his mouth turning downward in an exaggerated frown. “You needn’t fear me—not anymore. Come, give your lover a kiss.”

She bats his hands away when he reaches for her. “Never.”

He laughs as if her defiance is pointless. “We shall see,” he says. “Until tomorrow, little bird.” His fingers brush her cheek just before he winks out of existence.

She stares at the space he occupied, horror churning in her stomach. Her fingers quake as she touches her lips, tasting the memory of his kiss ghosting there. She strips the bed with a scream, scrubs her skin in the shower until it’s raw. She curls up on the floor, damp and shuddering until she succumbs to exhaustion.

_Until tomorrow_.

Never. Never again.

**~TBC~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is continued in the next chapter.


	5. This Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to Foreign. He comes for her daily, and this time she promises herself that she won’t give in. (Post-Avengers. Dark!Loki.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M  
Genre: Drama, Angst, Dark, Unhealthy Relationship

**THIS TIME**

This time, she won’t give in.

She’ll ignore the way his unearthly eyes travel down, down, down like the last autumn leaf before the dawning of winter. Her breath won’t catch when he advances toward her in languid stride, building the unbearable tension step by agonizing step. Her heart won’t quake when he says her name with a reverence belied by the dark smile he wears.

This time, she’ll turn away when he takes her face in his slender hands and leans forward, his mouth hovering just over hers. She won’t close her eyes in anticipation of his gelid kiss, of his tongue tracing a line across her lips, of his breath fluttering through her hair as he presses her against the wall. She won’t stand on her toes until he lifts her up and wraps her legs around his waist. Her fingers won’t fumble with the straps of his leather armor. She won’t let out a trembling sigh when he tugs her shirt over her head.

And she won’t sleep with him. 

Not this time. 

She’s made this promise before. After the first time, when his lips grazed the shell of her ear as he whispered what he’d like to do to her. She made the promise again after the second time, when he told her between devouring kisses that once wasn’t enough. She makes the promise after every session of that ends with her in his arms. And she never keeps it. 

But not this time. 

The temperature drop in the lab is almost imperceptible, but she has grown accustomed to this harbinger of his arrival. He always comes. Every day since he “bumped” into her on the street, pretending to be an ordinary guy. She’s not sure how he manages this; he’s supposed to be in prison— on another world. He’s told her as much, told her that he’s sent his consciousness—his soul, as he calls it—across the void in a mere projection of himself. But if that’s true, why does he feel so undeniably _real_ against her skin? 

He’s there, appearing between one blink and another. She averts her gaze, already half-undone by his eyes—too pale, too bright, too hungry. He’s killed people, she reminds herself. He destroyed Manhattan in his ambition to bring her world to its knees. He made attempts on his own brother’s life. She clings to this knowledge like a shield as she feels him draw closer. 

“Jane, Jane, foolish Jane,” he murmurs with a soft laugh. “Are you truly planning to resist me today? After all that we’ve shared together? I’m heartbroken.” But he isn’t. He’s amused. He likes the chase. She hates that she knows him so well. She hates that he knows her so well. 

_Killer, villain, monster_. She repeats the words silently like an incantation to ward off the way his voice trails goosebumps down her spine. “I can’t do this,” she says, “I don’t want to.” 

He tilts his head, studies her with a flick of his tongue across his bottom lip. One corner of his mouth turns upward as he lifts a brow in disbelief. “You don’t want to what?” He’s taunting her, daring her to describe everything that has already transpired between them. Because he knows she can’t do it—not without her heart racing, not without her voice becoming a hoarse whisper. 

But neither can she let him have the upper-hand anymore. “I won’t because... Thor.” She invokes the forbidden name and watches Loki’s dimpled smile drop into a sneer. She holds her ground despite the fear snaking through her veins. 

_Killer, villain, monster_. Angry with her. The game has become dangerous. 

With unnatural speed, he grabs her arm and yanks her against him. “Thor,” he says his adoptive brother’s name as though it is the filthiest of curses, “is not here._ I_ am.” 

“You’re not here, either,” she breathes, pushing against his armor. The supple leather is solid beneath her fingertips. The scientist in her wants to understand how this is possible. How she can smell the faint scent of the hide mingled with the overpowering scent of him? 

“I’m more here than he’s ever been.” He glares down at her with chilling fury. Loki despises being reminded of her affection for the golden-haired demigod, even though it was that affection which drew him to her in the first place. 

His hand slides down the curve of her spine, pressing her into him. “You’re more mine than you’ve ever been his.” 

She resists the instinct to tip her chin up, to expose the length of her neck and offer it to him, proving his statement true. “I don’t belong to anyone—least of all you.” 

He bares his teeth in a snarl and she knows she’s teetering too close to the edge of his murderous wrath. But it’s the only way to break this twisted thing between them. He’s like a drug, and every time she indulges in her yearning for him, she becomes darker. Just a shade. Just a little more gray. Just a little less white. 

This is what he’s doing to her—shaping her into something that suits his blackened and mangled heart. Shaping her into something that Thor couldn’t possibly care for anymore. She suspects that this has been his design all along—else why would he return each day? He can’t crave her as much as she does him. 

“You cannot love him,” Loki says in a low growl, his eyes translucent and as hard as ice. “You don’t _know_ him.” 

She loathes this part—when his words put another crack in the effigy she’s created of Thor in her mind. When he tells her stories from his youth, of a fair young thunder god who laughed while in the throes of battle lust, who counted kills like trophies, who believed that not one species in the nine realms could come close to equal the might and glory of the Aesir, who courted girls for the challenge, the conquest. _Lies, lies, lies_, she wants to tell herself. 

But then, she doesn’t know Thor, not really. 

She won’t admit it to Loki, though. And so she says instead, “I know _you_.” 

More than she ever wanted to and not nearly as much as she needs to. She leaves the _And I don’t love you_ left unsaid. Because she thinks speaking that sentence will drive him over the precipice this time. And because the words aren’t entirely true. A part of her does love him, loves how alive he makes her feel, the way an addict loves a chosen vice. 

He smiles then, a horribly feral thing that makes her question how tenuous his sanity is. “Yes,” he agrees, “and yet, you still want me—no matter how you protest.” He bends his neck and whispers next to her ear, “I wonder, are you so terribly wanting that you would lie with a despicable creature like me? Or are you as broken as I am?” 

She turns away, feeling an angry blush scorching her cheeks. “Stop it, Loki.” His questions flay her open, exposing every unsettling revelation about herself she’s had while lying next to him, skin against skin. 

“_You_ stop deceiving _yourself_, Jane Foster,” he bites out, grasping her chin and wrenching her head to face him. “Stop clinging to your false sense of morality because you are too timorous to admit this simple truth: you are more like me than you will ever be like him. Your best match is not with the heroic god of virtue and righteousness, but with the wretched god of lies and mayhem. Or else you would have never let me into your life, let alone into your bed.” His voice rises with each word, lips curling with contempt. 

As she stares up at him, she wants to claw at his face and scream. She wants to crumple to the floor and weep. She wants him to shut up, to leave her alone, to kiss her until the fires of passion burn away everything else, until she forgets his terrible indictment of her. “I hate you.” 

He gives her a quiet, bitter laugh. “Everyone does,” he says. A single tear slips from the corner of his eye, despite the cavalier aura he projects. “But no one more than myself.” 

She wishes she hadn’t resisted him, that she hadn’t forced him to this confession. _Killer, Villain, Monster_ becomes _Shattered, Lonely, Lost_, and she doesn’t know how to reconcile his past nefarious deeds with the damaged little boy revealed beneath his mocking, haughty exterior. The latter doesn’t excuse the former, but it makes him more than just a psychopath, less than a crazed demon. And she thinks maybe he hasn’t always been this mad, this tyrannical. Had everything he had ever known been obliterated before his eyes, and in that fragile moment, he snapped? 

She shies away from the question. She doesn’t want to feel compassion for him pooling in her chest, choking her heart. She wants him to stay the rogue who only pursues her out of jealous spite for his brother. She wants to blame him for seducing her, for corrupting her. She doesn’t want to know that this thing between them could be as close as he gets to solace—that maybe his daily visits are not always part of some Machiavellian master plan. 

And she doesn’t want to cry for him. 

With a long, slender finger he traces a tear on her cheek and brings it to his mouth. She draws in a ragged breath when he tastes the salty drop. Every nerve ending in her body comes alive under his unwavering gaze, and she is struck by one last truth. 

She’s not going to keep her promise. 

Not this time. 

Not ever. 

She doesn’t feel hollow resignation as she expects. She feels strangely liberated; the ubiquitous guilt coiled tightly in her stomach has dissipated. Without it, she’s suddenly more herself than she’s been in the weeks since he revealed his true identity. She marvels at the incongruity of finding peace in surrender. To him. To a dark and broken immortal prince. 

His eyes narrow. He’s noticed the change that has come over her, but doesn’t know its meaning. This is how she’s gained the upper-hand, she realizes. Not in fighting him. But in giving in. 

She smiles up at him, a gesture that deepens the furrow in his brow as she reaches up to tangle her fingers in the black hair curling at the nape of his neck. He leans into her caress before catching himself. His hand captures hers and pulls it away from him. 

“I don’t know what new ploy you’ve conjured in that little head of yours,” he says, “but it won’t work.” 

Her smile widens. “I know.” There are no more ploys, no more battles. This war, at least, is over for her, for him. He doesn’t know it yet. 

It’s not the answer he anticipated, and from tightening of his jaw, he’s unsettled by it. His gaze slides away from her, to some distant place in his mind. Or maybe back to where he really is, to the crystalline cell he once described, sequestered deep within the catacombs of Asgard. After an elongated silence, he looks at her again, wary, guarded, and he slips his fingers beneath the collar of her shirt. His lips part, and her heart stops working properly when he leans down and crushes his mouth over hers. 

This time, she will let his hands grasp the back of her thighs as he lifts her onto the desk. She won’t care when her paperwork flutters to the ground in spiraling flurries. She’ll arch into him as he trails rough kisses down her throat, as his fingers seek the flesh under her shirt, beneath the waistband of her jeans. She’ll pull at his armor while she tries to remember the secret of its release. 

This time, she won’t feel damned for screaming his name when he’s wrested every last morsel of pleasure from her. 

And next time, she will teach him about trust, about letting go. 

About love. 

**~FIN~**


	6. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were immortal. She wasn’t supposed to die. Not before him. Never before him. (Thor 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T  
Genre: Drama, Angst, Grief
> 
> A/N: This piece was inspired by [Ellie Goulding’s cover of the Klodaline song “All I Want.”](https://youtu.be/xlGy7PfIbrc)

**MEMORY**

They were immortal. She wasn't supposed to die. Not before him. Never before him.

Yet here she lies, a crown of white flowers on her head, sable hair fanning out on the blankets like a halo. Her eyes are closed, mouth slack in repose as if she is merely slumbering, and he wants to scream, claw at the Norns. Because how can she be so still, so peaceful when every bone and sinew in his body is in turmoil?

He is tempted to grasp her shoulders, to shake her and make her confess that this sordid affair is nothing more than a bit of mischief.

_Wake up_, he wills her as tears blur his vision like ill-made glass. _Wake up; I don't want to play this game anymore_.

Frigga places a hand on his shoulder, delicate fingers curling over his tunic. "It's time," she murmurs. Her voice is soft, steeped in grief. As a queen who mourns the senseless loss of one of her subjects. As a mother who feels her son's pain.

There are others standing at the seashore, glittering starlight cupped in their hands. Waiting. For him to finish his goodbyes. For the Allfather to send the boat over the falls and commend the soul of the only woman Loki has ever loved—will ever love—to the halls of Valhalla. It was a good funeral, they'll say when it is over. Befitting of the goddess of fidelity. Tales will be told of her adventures, of her kindness, of her playful nature and her clever mind--until she is no more than lore.

Life will go on.

But not for him. Not for the boy she shaped into a man. Not for the man who knew the beat of her heart beneath the palm of his hand, who knew how the curve of her fit against the corners of him as they talked, laughed, loved. Not for the man who is nothing more than a parched husk of envy, of anger, of self-pity without her serenity.

He is lost—he always will be—without her.

He releases the side of the boat, steps back as the water draws it away from the bank. Flamed arrows soar toward the vessel a breath later, setting ablaze the pyre beneath her lifeless form. Globes of dazzling light float upward, illuminating the pale frowns and glistened cheeks of her mourners. The crack of Gungnir against stone reverberates through the procession, and Loki turns away, unable to watch the gilded shimmer of her essence exit this realm for all eternity. Because he cannot bring himself to believe she is lost to him—not truly. Not when he still needs her so desperately.

Her name never again passes his lips, and over time, over centuries, the memory of her wanes like a painting bleached by overexposure.

The aching hollow in his chest, though, remains as vivid, as gaping as when she drew her last breath.

* * *

_I like her._

He hates that he does. Because he doesn't want to feel—not like this. He doesn't want to remember that he wasn't always the monster he crafted himself into. He doesn't want to recall when his laughter was unfettered by mockery and malice, when his smiles were not an artifice to unsettle, to incite fear.

Of all the women his brother could have had, he chose one just like _her_. Only it's worse. This one, so like his beloved and so different, is mortal. Frail. _Say goodbye_, he warns Thor. _Say goodbye just as I did. Let your heart be poisoned by her demise just as mine was._

But then, the golden son of Asgard would never be corrupted in such a manner. Loki doubts his brother can love so thoroughly, so deeply that he would be obliterated by loss.

Loki loved once. And as he glances at fragile little Jane, sick with the power of the Æther and yet her jaw is set with implacable determination, he realizes that he could love again. The revelation feels like betrayal, but he cannot stay the yearning blossoming in the chasm formed by Sigyn's death.

A new desire bleeds through his craving for vengeance for Frigga's life, his hunger for uncontested dominion over everything. He wants something more elusive, more impossible.

Comfort. Peace. To be seen. Not as a villain, a trickster, a bastard liar. But a broken man who chases after things to fill the perpetual emptiness inside of him—things that slip away like sand through his fingers. He wants to be free of the tangle he's made of his life, free of jealousy, of rage, of anguish.

He will die for it, here on the obsidian hills of Svartalfheim. For her—Jane. Because though he could love her, she could never love him, not what he's become. (Sigyn wouldn't, either.) For her, he'll play the hero, and maybe, _maybe_ it will be a sufficient atonement.

Maybe he will see the face of his beloved once more among the warriors of Valhalla.

Maybe.

Only, he survives. Against all odds. Against his every wish. He lives, and his torment is redoubled—by renewed memories of the one he lost and the fresh knowledge of the one he can't have.

He laughs. Pain lances through the wound left by Kurse's blade, but it is nothing compared to the agony Loki must endure for millennia more.

He decides he'll unseat Odin, retake the throne he was told was his birthright. He'll hold Gungnir in his hands again, rule the nine realms—too occupied by the obligations of the crown to think of Jane. To be tortured by what should have been but would never be.

He will forget her.

He _will_.

He has to.

(He won't.)

**~FIN~**


	7. Danger Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is his domain, and she’s trespassed it. Intentionally. (Post-Thor 2 canon divergence. Dark!Loki)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M  
Genre: Drama, Angst, Dark, Seduction  
WARNING: Infidelity
> 
> A/N: Written for the prompt from l-o-k-i-hiddleston (aka Anonymous Companion): “Loki finds Jane looking in his section of the royal library.”

**DANGER AHEAD**

She feels him. As soon as she steps foot in the vast room. Before he announces his presence. He’s larger than life, like his brother. A deity. (An advanced being, her scientific mind corrects.) But where the golden son of Asgard is like the sun—bright, warm, open—the dark prince is a creeping black fog. Cold. Serpentine. Dangerous.

She doesn’t look for him. He’ll find her if it amuses him. (It often does.) Instead, she heads for the familiar stacks where the books are shelved on astronomy, on travel through the stars and gateways to other realms. Wide and varied beyond her not-so-limited imagination. Each page in this section is a dream from another life. Thousands upon thousands.

But her once unrestrained enthusiasm has languished, tempered by time. By experience. By obligation.

She likes to come here, though. To remember when the universe was more unknown than known. Before progressive civilizations were revealed to be rife with greed, with warmongering, with an unquenchable lust for power. Before each alien species proved just how very _human_ they were.

She tangles her thoughts in what-ifs. What if a banished prince had never fallen from the heavens. What if a blood feud hadn’t found its way to Earth.

What if she had never felt the burning, potent touch of the Æther.

She imagines her life without these significant alterations. Would she still be in the desert, fine-tuning her equipment, chasing after ribbons of light in the night sky? Still the bizarre researcher wasting her genius?

She smiles wistfully. The woman she is now seems innumerable leagues from that astrophysicist. With hopes as abandoned as these ancient tomes.

Perhaps it’s that prick of regret which has her returning here when she knows nothing good will come of it.

She drags a hand across a dozen books, choosing one at random, taking it with her to an overstuffed chair. It has the air of age, of ancient fingerprints pressed into its leather cover, into its sepia pages. She deciphers the angular runes—a skill she acquired years ago. _Reis Gjennom Brukket Lyset_. Journey (or Travel) Through Fractured Light. This, she suspects as she leafs through diagrams and equations mixed with lore, is how he knows the secret passageways. He dismantled the theory behind the Bifröst, examined it upside down and backwards until he recognized the ingredients where they combined in accidental convergence in nature.

Exactly what she would have done.

The ease of this comparison—her, a bright-eyed scientist, to him, a force of destruction—should bother her. It doesn’t. Not anymore.

She hasn’t forgiven him his multitude of sins. (Not consciously.) But she no longer views them through the tint of outrage and loathing; rather she recalls his misdeeds with dissociation. As mere facts recorded for historical purposes. Hatred is a badge too heavy, too draining to wear close to her heart indefinitely.

(Why hasn’t he shown himself yet?)

She reads without retaining a single phrase. She doesn’t thirst for knowledge. Not today. The book is merely an accessory in this guise of nonchalance. The artifice is pointless, of course. She’s learned the futility in attempting to deceive the self-proclaimed God of Deception.

Then again, he tells her she’s getting better at it.

Lying.

That, too, doesn’t bother her as it should.

She exhales, long and thin, careful to keep her sigh silent. He likes her impatience, savors it like a finely aged wine. She’s long held the belief that somewhere in his broken youth he learned to thrive with the bitter dregs of attention offered him. Veiled intolerance. Contempt. Ridicule. These give him life, purpose. They are his exacting delineation of self, and he craves them in the way a healthy being craves love and acceptance.

She thinks about him too much lately. She excuses too much.

She doesn’t care.

There it is. The almost imperceptible drop in temperature when he is near. The tinge of his wintery scent. (She’s become attuned to these harbingers of his arrival.) She waits a heartbeat and another before looking up. Because this is their ritual. This façade of disinterest.

He leans against the shelves, a book resting open in the palm of his hand as he drags a finger across his tongue before turning a page. She studies him, envious of his ability to affect an air of casual indifference so flawlessly. He _must_ have a tell, an infinitesimal chink in his meticulously crafted mask. She searches for it each time, and each time her endeavor proves fruitless.

“Jane Foster,” he says without a glance in her direction.

She’s never cared to do a comparative analysis of how her name sounds on the lips of others, but it is different when he says it. Weighted with unspoken intention. What that intention is, she doesn’t know.

She shouldn’t _want_ to know.

“Loki,” she returns, equally dispassionate. Who will blink first? (Her, most likely.)

Another lick of his finger. Another page turn before: “Does my brother know you’re here?”

She doesn’t flinch at the question. It’s simply another line in this scripted dialogue. She rises, re-shelves the volume she borrowed, and then looks at him. “Does it matter?”

The corner of his mouth turns up in a whisper of a smile. It’s not a crack in his veneer. He wants her to see it—his amusement at the ambivalent defiance in her words. “And what brings you to this…vaulted hall of knowledge today?”

She turns away from him, slides her fingers along the spines of a dozen tomes, selects another without thought. “Spectroscopy.”

His hand is over hers, pressing the book back into place. “Liar.”

He steps back, a fan of chills transuding down her back in his wake, and she refuses to ask when revulsion had denatured into enticement.

Eyes closed, breath stretched taut in her chest, she says a single word: “Muspelheim.”

His laugh is short, dry, quiet. As if he knows that this, too, is a lie—but he doesn’t challenge her again. Because giving voice to the truth will shatter the glass-blown moment between them.

With a languid flick of his wrist, flames begin to lap at the corners of the shelves, leaching across the stacks until she stands in the center of a firestorm, roaring, crackling. She’s not afraid; this is an illusion despite the heat that makes her skin glisten with sweat. (_Oh god, it’s so hot_.) His mirages are not wispy two-dimensional images but visions that consume all of her senses. Touch, taste, scent, and sound as well as sight. She doesn’t want to know whether the trick is external or if he’s inside her mind, manipulating the currents between her neurons.

The library gives way to a broken landscape of obsidian. Steam blows upward in vaporous charcoal and tangerine puffs from chasms in the ground. No, not steam. Things. Beings. Indistinct and corporeal at once. They gather in a dance, frenetic in one blink, passive the next. Music comes from everywhere— the hiss of boiling air, the snap of fiery embers, the moan of shifting earth.

“Hátíð Elda,” Loki murmurs. _Festival of Flame_.

Wonder awakens from its long hibernation and flutters in her stomach as he leads her through the throng of specters. They take many forms from simple humanoid shapes to figures so alien she cannot fully process what she is witnessing. Their eyes, however, remain the same. White so pure, so radiant that she cannot stare directly at them.

Loki draws a line from her shoulder to her wrist with the back of his fingers, and she becomes one of the gaseous _Eldjötnar_. She feels naked without the inhibition of skin and bones; she feels free. Flying apart and remade over and again as her molecules collide, solidify, evaporate. She is fire and smoke, heat and hunger. Exhilaration. She wants to laugh, and for a second, lungs and larynx solidify in her hazy center, emitting a stuttered rumble.

Loki grins before he, too, becomes a blazing mist, undulating, spinning with the crowd until she can no longer distinguish him from the others. She isn’t bothered by his apparent desertion of her. When it suits him, he’ll find her again. (He always does.)

Instead, she revels in forging new limbs, in casting off the reserved, austere woman that her years in Asgard have molded her into. She is reborn curious, awestruck, unfettered. Jane of old. Soaring within the currents of air swirling among the hordes of flaming apparitions.

She mingles with them, gasps when her subatomic particles brush against another’s. (Or she would gasp if this form drew breath.) Nonlinear thoughts, images, emotions sweep over and through her with each caress. Some shy away from her, an imposter, but more want to know the odd tang of her foreignness, just as she savors their exotic passions.

Hours, days, months pass before she senses him again. Her malevolent benefactor. His fire burns too cold, too dark, and she shouldn’t want to touch it, to taste it, to understand his hopes, his schemes. His pain, his triumphs. He is no friend of hers. Of Thor’s. He never will be.

And yet—

He makes the choice for her, bears down on her like a phantom intent on possession. He fills her with a thousand years of blinding joys, of crippling sorrows. His relentless drive for knowledge, for cunning. He shows her every act of mischief, innocent and malicious. He suffocates her with his poisonous jealousy, his blackened need to tear down and reconstruct things—people—in his likeness. He consumes and consumes and _consumes_ and is still as empty as the space between the stars.

She wrenches away from this pernicious communion, sucks in a shuddering breath when she is thrown from the illusion. Cool air pebbles her sweat-slicked skin with gooseflesh. He stands before her, once more the Jotunn-turned-Aesir demigod. Panting. Wearing a grin that borders on madness as his gaze makes an unhurried perusal of her body, clad only in a thin shift. (When had she taken off her gown?) He advances on her, removing vest and tunic to match her state of undress.

As a scientist (lapsed), she should have predicted this outcome to her dangerous little experiment. The indications were always there. When the dungeons no longer had any hold on him, he could have fled—_should_ have fled. But he remains in the Realm Eternal, pretends at reformation for Thor’s sake.

He’s never pretended for her.

Every minute he tolerated her presence, her tentative attempts at conversation (to know him, to accept him because he’s Thor’s beloved brother—she told herself), every illusion he wove to sate her inquisitiveness were steps on a path he mapped out long before. Just as he led her so subtly from the library to her private chambers under the guise of her “visit” to Muspelheim.

He has her against the wall, her legs around his waist, long fingers sliding beneath the bunched hem of her shift. His mouth hovers over hers as he murmurs, “Tell me to stop.”

She closes her eyes, grasps at any semblance of courage to make him leave. This is a line she never consciously believed she would cross, though it has begun to plague her dreams, her waking thoughts.

_Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,_   
_As to be hated but needs to be seen…_

“Run back to my brother,” he says, hands inching higher on her thighs, “and cower behind your little charade of morality.”

The air has become too thick between them.

_Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face…_

“Tell me to stop, Jane.” His voice is soft, but not unaffected. More than his hips pressing into hers, the sound of his lust splintering at the edge of his smooth baritone is what unmakes her.

_We first endure, then pity, then embrace_.

She pulls him down to her, and he smiles against her lips before he takes with his silver tongue the spoils of his gambit. She lets him leave a searing trail from her mouth to behind her ear to her collarbone. She lets him peel off the last of her clothing, lets him carry her to the bed where she doesn’t shed a tear when he sends her over the precipice the first time. She weeps silently after the second—when he falls with her.

She lets him hold her to his chest as he spins a new lie for her: that it’s common for a queen to take a consort. (She knows better, knows of his late mother’s transparent fidelity.) He will be hers, he says. And she will let him, even though he tipped his hand during their brief joining as _Eldjötnar_.

Because Thor loves her, but he only offers her what she’s never wanted. Not crowns, not titles, not a realm to rule by his side. Not immortality. She is only a pawn to Loki, but he gives her what she _needs_—a sojourn with the young researcher she was once. The last vestige of her humanity.

The cost isn’t her soul. (He’s taken that already.) The cost is the future heir to the throne of Asgard. A child who comes from his loins rather than the rightful king’s. But he won’t require it of her yet.

So begins the next round in their perverse game.

And this time, she has the advantage.

**~FIN~**


	8. Letting Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He holds her prisoner, but she’s discovered how to thwart him. (Canon divergence AU.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T  
Genre: Drama, Angst, Dark!Loki

**LETTING GO**

It’s not about him.

She’s not sure how she’s come to this revelation, but as she studies the smirk that twists his mouth—at odds with the glassy pain in his eyes—she comprehends this plain truth: it’s not about what he’s done and what he’s still capable of doing. It’s about her.

“I forgive you.” Anger and hatred bleed from her with that simple statement. Emotions which have had their own black heart in her chest, beating poison through her veins. She feels lighter, freer.

He sneers at her. “I don’t need your forgiveness, mortal.”

She smiles. Because he doesn’t understand. _She_ needed it. She needed to disentangle herself from the web of deceit and violence he’s spun around her, around those she loves. In forgiving him, she’s no longer his victim.

She’s taken away his power over her.

“I forgive you,” she repeats, reveling in the sweet taste of these three words. They strip him of the veil of power-mad god. She now sees a broken little boy and a new feeling thrums beneath her skin. Pity. Sympathy. Empathy. This is why Thor has loved his brother in spite of Loki’s attempts on his life. This is why Frigga never turned her back on the black prince of Asgard.

“I forgive you,” she says again.

“_Enough!_” Loki slams Gungnir against the gilded dais, rises from the throne. He descends the steps with a menacing gait until he’s standing over her. “I don’t want it.”

“Sometimes you get what you don’t want, Loki,” she returns. Not an invective. Merely a point of fact. One listed among the things he’s given her that she never wanted: the glories of the Realm Eternal, when she was satisfied with the meagerness of Earth; a crown to rule at his side, when she preferred her makeshift research lab in New Mexico; his relentless obsession with possessing everything Thor once had—including her.

The muscles in his jaw flex, just briefly before he trains his expression to that of playful trickster diety. “Perhaps,” he says. “But I also get what I _do_ want in the end, Jane. Always.” His long fingers trace a line from her chin to the bend in her jaw, and she shudders at his touch. Equal parts revulsion and the unwelcome tendrils of desire—the former because of the latter.

“Come to me tonight,” he murmurs. “Surrender to me, once and for all.”

She closes her eyes for a breath before looking up at him with a gaze infused with steel. “I still don’t love you.”

He bares his teeth in growling rage and withdraws his hand. “You will,” he threatens. “You will love me more than you ever loved him. Even if it takes a thousand years.”

He grabs her arm and, with long strides, hauls her out of the throne room. Out of the palace. Toward the gardens where Idunn’s tree grows and bears the fruit of immortality.

Something else she never wanted.

She’ll have to forgive him this, too.

**~FIN~**


	9. Sown In Tears, Reaped In Vindication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For twenty years, Loki has been lying in wait, looking for the opportune moment when his prey shows weakness. (Historical Edwardian Era AU based on the television series _The Grand_)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: M  
Genre: Edwardian AU, Historical AU, Non-Magical AU Drama, Angst, Dark, Manipulation  
WARNING: Infidelity, Unhealthy Relationship
> 
> A/N: This could be considered a sequel to audreyii-fic ‘s story, [The Grand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1295896/chapters/4345287). This was written for a challenge on Tumblr, to include the sentence: "How do you stop loving someone who has stopped loving you?"
> 
> <strike>I use Norwegian in this, but if I've made a mistake, please let me know!</strike> Massive thanks to HitMeWithAnAxeOneTime for helping me get the Norwegian correct!

**SOWN IN TEARS, REAPED IN VINDICATION**

Thor sits at the bar, broad shoulders hunched as he stares at his glass of _akevitt_. Loki watches from the shadows (as always—lurking, observing, collecting). He’s mildly surprised to see his brother in this—what had he called it? oh, yes—den of iniquity. Surely the fair-haired paragon of virtue would seek solace in a venue more befitting of his light and goodness.

But then, something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something important.

After Thor knocks back his liquor, grimacing at the burn, and motions for another, Loki makes his approach. (There is only so much one can gain by watching, after all.) He slides through the crowd of hedonistic revelers, holding up a hand when one or two begin to entreat him. No distractions tonight, not when there is such fodder to be had from his vaulted brother.

He takes a seat next to Thor, orders the same drink. He waits a beat, waits until Thor acknowledges his presence with a sidelong glance before asking, “Hva uroer deg, bror? Virksomheten går bra, gjør den ikke?”

Thor grunts a bitter laugh. “You know it is, thanks to your generous support,” he answers in English. After nearly twenty years of marriage to a foreigner, he slips between his native tongue and hers as easily as Loki does—even if his pronunciation is still accented. (Never quite going the extra mile, Thor. Always doing just enough. Such a _useful_ little defect of character.) 

“I’m glad to hear that my investment is flourishing.” Loki brings his glass to his mouth, lets the spice and citrus of the akevitt roll over his tongue. “And Jane? The children? They are well, too?”

Thor’s jaw clenches, muscle cording over bone. “They are quite well, yes.” A half-truth, most certainly, by the sarcasm discoloring his words.

Loki wants to pounce on that thread of intrigue, but he’s long mastered the subtle art of encouraging his brother in increments to reveal his secrets (his weaknesses). “And yet you are troubled. Have you done something?” (Say yes.)

Thor looks at him, eyes full of glassy helplessness. “If I have, I wish to know it,” he confesses with a desperation unbecoming of the strong, noble son of Odin. “She’s moved out of our rooms, and I don’t understand why.”

“That is grave news, indeed.” _Important_ news. Loki furrows his brow in sympathy. “But perhaps this is only temporary. She has always been rather impulsive.” Not entirely true, but the best lies are a simple matter of misdirection, and setting husband and wife against one another has become more instinct than habit.

“No,” Thor says, shaking his head as he downs his drink. “She no longer loves me. Tell me, brother, what am I to do with that?”

Oh, but what Loki could do with this revelation. _Will_ do. Not yet, though. He keeps his expression neutral. “Did she say this to you?”

“Not in words,” Thor admits with bowed shoulders, “but certainly in deed. It’s never been the same—not since…”

“Ah.” Loki nods in somber understanding. Not since loss of little Alf-Peter. That was a rather convenient thing—not that Loki wished for their youngest boy’s death. (He’s not a monster—not completely.) “There you have it. She is only grieving.”

Thor frowns at him in obvious disbelief. “For seven years?”

“Who is to say how long it takes for a mother to mourn,” Loki replies, but Thor is no longer listening.

His attention is back on his empty glass. “Hvordan slutter du å elske noen som har sluttet å elske deg?”

Pathetic. Thor playing the heartbroken, jilted husband—when he hadn’t loved her on their wedding day and likely hadn’t truly loved her until he found himself without her undying devotion. _This_ is the quixotic hero who always had everything and deserved none of it. How the mighty have fallen. (Loki regrets nothing.)

“Perhaps, if I speak with her,” he says, “she can be made to see reason.”

Thor looks up, face softening in wretched hope. “If you can accomplish such a feat, I will be eternally in your debt.”

Tempting, but no. Thor’s unending gratitude is not the prize Loki seeks. (It never was.) He waves the bartender over, instructs him to give his brother whatever he wants, and then leaves Thor to swim in his misery.

Jane isn’t in their apartment, as Thor said, but has taken up residence in one of the hotel suites. Loki doesn’t knock—he doesn’t need to—as the door is open, servants bustling in with her things. He leans against the jamb, arms crossed, studying her as she directs the chaos. Age has done nothing to her beauty but sharpen the edges once blurred with youth. She is the specter which has haunted him these past twenty years, driven him to the brink of madness, inspired him to a level of cunning and machination which his paltry envy of Thor never could.

She wipes a bead of sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, says something to one of the maids, her gaze falling on him, and as ever, he feels truly _seen_. This, he thinks, is what draws him to her. Her eyes pierce his meticulously crafted façade, and he likes being known—even if she despises the crepuscule she finds there.

“What do you want, Loki?” she asks, lips thin with disapproval. (So lovely, her contempt. Why should Thor yearn for her affection when there is this to be had?)

“Your husband is working quite hard to get drunk in my establishment,” Loki replies stepping into the room uninvited. “Care to enlighten me?”

She casts a surreptitious glance at the servants who make embarrassingly poor attempts at pretending not to listen. “It’s none of your concern.”

Loki raises his brows. “On the contrary, he’s sent me to be his emissary in this unfortunate business.”

Her responding laugh is brittle. “You didn’t come here for Thor.”

“Deres arbeid er ferdig her!” he snaps at the others, and they spare only a heartbeat before shuffling from the room. He closes the door behind them, the lock falling into place with a clank. The empty-headed imbeciles will talk; let them. Reputations have long since ceased to be of any worry to Loki—particularly _good_ ones.

Jane says nothing. Whether she recognizes the futility of protesting or she unconsciously desires the coming incendiary confrontation, she’s a fool for allowing him entry in the first place.

“You’re right.” He turns to her, smile stretching wide across his mouth. “I didn’t come here for him.” He closes the distance between them with unhurried footfalls, glad that her defiance keeps her from retreating. “I came to finally enjoy the fruits of my labors.”

She scoffs, though the rise and fall of her chest has become quick, shallow. “You think because Thor and I are having troubles that I will fall into your arms?” Rancor bleeds into her voice, pinches her face. “As if I could ever love you.”

His smile doesn’t drop; he’s impervious to this vitriol. She sees but she doesn’t understand. “Oh, Jane,” he murmurs, cupping her cheek. When she doesn’t jerk away from his touch (telling, that), he caresses a line up her jaw with his other hand. “I don’t need your love. I only need you.”

He’s so close, so close to sating this gnawing decades-old hunger. His bones vibrate with anticipation.

She slaps him hard across the face. “Dra til helvete!”

He laughs, dry, clipped. “Jeg er allerede der.”

He captures her wrist when her hand flies again, grips her waist and yanks her into him. He smothers her objection with a brutal kiss, crushing, deep, wet. Teeth clashing against teeth. Because he wants— _needs_—to devour her. The resistance she puts up is tissue thin, perfunctory at best, and soon she is meeting him lust for lust. And as much as he’s savored her intransigence, how unexpectedly honeyed her capitulation is.

She is his—despising him, even as he divests her of gown and shift, but _his_.

When he was a boy, in a futile attempt to quell his consuming jealousy, Frigga once told him that having is often not quite so pleasing as wanting.

But as Jane lies beneath him, slick with sweat and back arching as she cries out, Loki knows his mother was wrong.

Having is _everything_.

(Thor’s devastation most of all.)

**~FIN~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations: **  
  
Hva uroer deg, bror? Virksomheten går bra, gjør den ikke? = What upsets you, brother? Business is going well, is it not?  
Hvordan slutter du å elske noen som har sluttet å elske deg? = How do you stop loving someone who has stopped loving you?  
Deres arbeid er ferdig her!= Your work is done here!  
Dra til helvete! = Go to hell!  
Jeg er allerede der. = I’m already there.


	10. Waking Up Is Hard To Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane wakes up and finds she’s not alone in bed. (Alternate Universe.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: T  
Genre: Humor, Alternate Universe

**WAKING UP IS HARD TO DO**

She doesn’t want to wake up, not yet. She’s in a snuggly, happy place, cocooned in soft feather comforters and a warm body wrapped around—

_Wait_.

Her eyes fly open, and heart pounding, she turns to see exactly who is sharing her bed. No, _not_ her bed. Definitely not. Her companion, for lack of a better word, is hidden beneath a veil of dark hair—black hair. Long hair.

She tries to disentangle herself from his long limbs and—oh god, where are her clothes?—he stirs, mumbling something unintelligible in a deep baritone before pulling her flush against his equally nude body.

This is bad. This is very, very bad. Why can’t she remember how she got here? Did she go out with Darcy last night and hook up with some random guy? Exactly how much did she have to drink? Because this isn’t her. Never. It may have been three years since Thor returned to Asgard and one year since he came back—just not to her—before disappearing again, but even jaded, she’s not the kind of gal to do the one-night stand thing. At least not, apparently, before last night. 

She attempts another escape and is rewarded with more grumbling, more tightening of his arms. She landed herself a cuddler. How, precisely? 

Giving up the notion of sneaking out of bed, she shoves against him and wrangles herself free of his grasp. He half sits up with a groan, and she bites back a scream. 

Looking up at her with bleary eyes is Loki. _Loki_. As in “I think I’ll to destroy Manhattan because I’m bored out of my gourd” little-black-sheep-brother-of-Thor Loki. Naked. In bed with her. _Naked_. 

She scrambles back, belatedly realizing that she should have taken the blanket with her when his gaze dips briefly to her bare breasts. She grabs a nearby pillow and does her best to cover herself. The corner of his mouth quirks up in a smirk. 

“You’re—” She points an accusatory finger at him, but her brain seems stuck on the first word of her diatribe and is unable to load the rest. “You’re—” She tries again and fails. 

“I’m what?” he asks, sitting up fully, blankets pooling low on his hips. (Don’t look. Don’t look. Too late.) “Extraordinarily clever? Dashingly handsome? Remarkably virile?” 

“You’re Loki!” her brain finally finishes. 

He raises a brow. “I’m Loki? After all that build up? I’m disappointed, Jane.” 

“You kidnapped me!” she blurts out. And did god knows what to her, to boot. 

He seems utterly baffled by her accusation, and then some kind of light bulb clicks on. “They did say there might be temporary side effects as your body goes through the transformation, but I don’t recall anyone mentioning memory loss.” 

“What are you talking about?” she practically screeches the question as she backs toward the edge of the bed. (Good grief, it’s huge.) 

He gives her a predatory smile. “My dear Jane,” he says, crawling toward her. “My darling _wife_, you’ve had an apple of Idun. And now it seems I get to make you fall in love with me all over again.” 

He catches her arm just before she accidentally topples off the mattress. “The chase was fun the first time. I think it might be even better the second.”

**~FIN~**


	11. Surprise Gone Awry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Throwing Loki a surprise birthday party was probably not the best idea. (Canon divergence AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: K+  
Genre: Canon Divergence AU, Humor, Shenanigans

**SURPRISE GONE AWRY**

Loki is far from amused as he scans the pathetic decorations made of swaths of computer paper and Mylar balloons. Jane’s assistant blows on a funny little device that rolls open and makes an ear-grating noise. "Surprise," the girl says rather lamely.

Loki glares down at Jane. She beams back at him with a shrug as if to say, “What did you expect? You knew I was going to do it anyway.”

Impossible woman. Simply _impossible_. Why he deigns to grace her with his presence, he’ll never know. (Because she is intelligent, tenacious, resourceful, and reminds him of another headstrong woman who saw past the mask he displays for all. This, however, will not save her from a sound retribution.)

"My dear Jane," he says through a gritted smile, "I believe I made thoughts on this matter clear."   
He had. Very, very clear. 

In the haze following a particularly intimate interlude, she asked him when his birthday was as she traced a lazy scrawl over his chest. He thought it odd—why should the day of his birth have any importance?—but he humored her as well as he could. (After she’d done that glorious thing to him mere moments ago, he was feeling uncharacteristically generous.) In truth, he didn’t know the day he took his first breath—though he guessed it was near enough to when Odin overthrew Laufey. (The remembrance of both so-called fathers left a sour taste in Loki’s mouth.) And with the different calendars between realms, it was a somewhat irritating to calculate something approximating a birthday for her. She was terribly fortunate that he liked her. 

Then came a discussion about ridiculous things called “birthday parties.” Leave it to the mortals to celebrate something so banal as surviving another year as though they had accomplished some kind of impossible feat. (He supposes they had in a way, considering their fragility.) And when Jane learned he’s never had any ceremony of the sort, there was that glint in her amber eyes—one that foretold of a kind of mischief that he would not enjoy. 

"Whatever you’re thinking in that small brain of yours," he warned, "stop." 

She grinned innocently at him. “I’m not thinking anything.” 

Liar. 

As he takes in the crowd waiting for some kind of reaction from him (a positive one, no doubt), he realizes that he underestimated her ingenuity. How had she managed to convince the Avengers to attend a party for him when not long ago, they were attempting to kill him? And Thor. Thor is here, holding a glass in salute with that doltish smile parting his lips wide. And Lady Sif and the Warriors Three (though the Lady looks decidedly less pleased to be in attendance). 

"This is happening, so get over it," Jane admonishes through her smile as she links her arm with his. "And play nice." 

The corners of Loki’s mouth curve up in a smirk. He most certainly will not. 

Hours later, it takes a small army of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to settle the ensuing chaos of exploding birthday cupcakes, conical cardboard party hats which have become heat-seeking missiles, balloons on the rampage, among other things. It’s surprisingly entertaining to watch Earth and Asgard’s vaulted heroes fend off objects that should never be animated. There might be something to this silly Midgardian tradition after all. 

After the dust settles, Jane sits with her head in her hands. “Next year I’m just taking you out to dinner.” 

Loki laughs, wiping a bit of frosting from her brow. “Oh, don’t do that,” he says. “I’ve found I’m quite fond of birthday parties.” 

He kisses away her protest, his devious mind already planning next year’s festivities. 

**~FIN~**


	12. An Advantageous Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki happens upon a young woman stuck on a very bad date. He can't resist offering a helping hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** PG-13/T  
**Genre:** Human AU, Non-magical AU, Humor

**AN ADVANTAGEOUS ENCOUNTER**

The restroom door creaked as it opened, and Loki glanced up briefly from washing his hands. It was an involuntary movement, cursory at best, and his gaze dropped to the sink before he realized what he’d seen. His head snapped back up in a double take, and yes, there was a petite _woman_ sagging against the door, palms pressed into her eyes as she muttered under her breath. Something about strangling people; it was a toss-up between a person named Darcy and “the idiot who invented Tinder.”

Loki smirked, glad he’d needed to use the facilities after his monthly get-together with his brother. This might prove to be an intriguing, if brief, diversion. He leaned against the counter and cleared his throat. The young woman pulled her hands away from her face, mouth forming an “o” when her gaze landed on him. She tipped her head back with a mirthless laugh.

“Don’t tell me,” she said. “I’m in the men’s bathroom.” She went on before he could confirm her gaffe. “Because that would be the icing on the cake of this crappy night. I’d say it couldn’t get any worse, but I’m pretty sure the universe would take that as a challenge.”

Loki chuckled. She was a spirited little thing. “Bad date?”

“Oh, no,” she answered with a snort. “I’ve been on a bad dates. What’s happening out there is a _disaster_.”

His interested was most definitely piqued. “And what, may I ask, makes it a disaster?”

Someone tried to push the door open, but she threw her body weight against it and yelled, “It’s occupied!”

Loki gave a significant glance at the two empty stalls and the row of unused urinals.

Her responding grin was underscored with a tinge of pink in her cheeks. “I just want a minute to figure out a way to safely escape this guy. I mean the fact that he’s photoshopped my Tinder pics with his is creepy enough. But then he told me the things he’s planning to do to me—things that he feels he’s earned the right to do because he’s bought me a couple of drinks…” She shuddered visibly. “I’m a little bit worried that he'll follow me home.”

Loki frowned. That was rather problematic. “Would you like some help?”

She looked him over, eyes narrowed. “I don't know,” she said slowly. “I’ve already got a budding stalker waiting for me. It’d be just my luck that you turn out to be a charming serial killer.”

He laughed. Charming, he’d take. Serial killer? No, not precisely. “You’ll just have to trust me.” He straightened and crossed the few steps to her, offering a hand to shake. “I”m Loki Odinson.”

She peered at his hand for a beat before taking it. She clearly didn’t recognize his name, but he wasn’t surprised. He was well-known only in certain circles.

“Jane,” she replied. “Jane Foster. You do realize that your given name doesn’t exactly instill a whole lot of confidence in the trusting department.”

His mouth stretched in a wide smile. Oh, he liked her. “No, it doesn’t,” he agreed. “But I can assure you that my idea of fun when it comes to the fairer sex is perfectly harmless—unlike your date.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek, apparently weighing her options. “Okay,” she relented. “How are you going to help me?”

“Go back to your date—” he nodded toward the door, “—and when I come along, follow my lead.”

She made a derisive sound, shaking her head. “That’s not cryptic at all.” She raised her hands with a sigh. “But I guess beggars can’t be choosers. Please don’t take long. He really is freaking me out.”

She yanked open the door and marched out. Loki waited a minute before he followed, and it took another for his eyes to adjust to the darker lighting of the main room. He hadn’t noticed earlier how busy it had been, but he found the large number of bodies inconvenient now as he scanned the establishment for Jane.

Ah, there.

She was in a booth in the corner, appearing both annoyed and disturbed as she listened to the man opposite her. Loki assessed her date as he made his way to them. The fellow was somewhat attractive, though slight in both height and build. Good. He talked animatedly, waving his arms to punctuate whatever it was he was going on about. As Loki drew closer, he caught the other man’s words.

“…have any special kinks I should know about? Because I’m not a selfish lover or anything. You’re gonna be screaming my name several times before the night is through and begging me for more, trust me.”

What a repulsive creature. 

Loki stepped up to their table, wearing a mask of indignation as he addressed his new acquaintance. “What’s the meaning of this, Jane?”

She started, and her shocked gasp was spot on. “Loki! What are you doing here?” Well _done_. This was going to be very amusing.

“If you’re trying to make me jealous, _darling_,” he said through gritted teeth, “you should have picked a more worthy foe.” He gave the other man a quick once over, letting his authentic disdain show.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” the disgusting fellow demanded.

In a flash of movement, Loki grasped the other man’s shirt and yanked him out of the booth. He jabbed two fingers into the guy’s abdomen, knowing he’d mistake it as the barrel of a gun. “I’m her husband,” Loki lied in a deathly calm tone. “And I don’t take kindly to those who try to steal what’s mine.”

The other man’s eyes went round. “Listen, I didn’t know she was married! I swear! I mean, she’s not even wearing a ring!”

Beyond the bleating coward, two of Loki’s companions—tall, muscled gentlemen—rose from their seats at each end of the bar with identical expressions of concern. He gave them a bare shake of his head, and they lowered back onto their stools. He then stared down anyone else nearby who thought to come to the aid of this idiot. Fortunately, most seemed only interested in recording the confrontation on their cell phones.

“You know now,” he bit out, turning his attention back to Jane’s date, digging his fingertips deeper into the man’s soft middle. “You don’t look at her. You don’t think about her. You don’t desire her.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the other man stammered, voice cracking with terror. Pathetic. “She doesn’t exist. I get it.”

“Did you let him take a photo of you?” Loki asked Jane, though he kept his glare on her date. “You know how much I despise any man having photographs of you.”

Her date fumbled in his pocket and retrieved his phone. “Here!” He held it up. “You can have it, man. Take it! Just take it!”

Loki held his gaze for a heartbeat longer before pretending to slip his “weapon” in the waistband of his trousers beneath his suit jacket. He took the device, dropped it to the floor and smashed it with his heel. He ignored the surprised cries from the gathering crowd as he said, “I’m glad we understand each other.” He glanced at Jane and reached for her. “Shall we, my dear?”

She looked up at him with awe as she came to his side. “I’m so proud of you, honey,” she said. “You didn’t kill or even maim this one. You really have changed.”

Loki had to swallow back his laughter. She had no idea. Good show, however. “Don’t push me, Jane,” he warned in mock sternness as he led them toward the exit.

“But I have to get your attention somehow!” she whined before they made it through the doors.

Once outside and a block away, she doubled over, guffawing. “Oh…my…_god!_” She steadied herself with a hand on his arm. “That was… That was amazing. His face was priceless. You terrified him.”

“I quite enjoyed myself,” Loki confessed. He had. “Your performance was rather noteworthy as well.”

A fetching blush colored her face. She was pretty—beautiful, in fact, in a wholesome sort of way, though he doubted she ever played the doe-eyed ingénue. No, there was too much intelligence and fire to her.

“So, I guess I should say thank you and be on my way.” She pointed to an old sedan. “That’s me. It was a pleasure meeting you, Loki.”

He considered prolonging their encounter, but unfortunately, he was needed elsewhere tonight. “Likewise, Jane.”

She graced him with a brilliant smile as she backed toward her vehicle. He waited until she was inside, engine sputtering to life before turning to his companions who had lingered in the shadows behind him.

“Follow her date,” he said to Algrim. “Make sure he doesn’t accost any other woman—ever again.” Algrim gave him a curt nod and headed to the bar.

Loki pulled his phone out of the inside pocket of his jacket and dialed his assistant. She answered on the first ring.

“Please tell me you’re on your way to the hanger,” she demanded without preamble. “You’re late. If we don’t get in the air in the next hour, you’ll miss your meeting in Stockholm.”

“I’ll be there.” Loki strode to his town car where Mal was already holding the door open for him. “I want you to find everything you can on a woman named Jane Foster.”

“Jane Foster,” his assistant repeated. “Who is she?”

Loki grinned. “I have a feeling she’s someone worth knowing.”

**~FIN~**


	13. Game, Set, Match

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her task was simple: infiltrate high society and acquire the device that would bring her people freedom. Unfortunately, one of the Odinson heirs was too clever to fall for her ruse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** PG-13/T  
**Genre:** Steampunk AU, Non-magical AU, Human AU, Drama, Romance

**GAME, SET, MATCH**

"I know," Loki whispered close to her ear, sending a thick swell of chills dancing over her skin. "I _always_ know."

Jane tried not to flinch, polite smile painted on her lips as he led her in languid circles at the masquerade. The next turn took her near her mentor. Erik cast her a worried glance, but she shook her head—a small movement, almost imperceptible, but not enough that Loki missed it.

His mouth split into a wide, cruel smile, and her heart pounded like a hammer ringing in her ears. "You think yourself so very clever," he murmured, cinching his arm about her waist tighter, "hiding behind your mask, pretending to be a lady."

Her cheeks burned at the implication in his tone. "I pretend at nothing, sir," she returned, words clipped. "I think our dance is over." She attempted to extricate herself from his grasp, but he was as unyielding as a statue.

He breathed a soft, raspy laugh. "Oh, but I'm not finished with you yet, _Miss Foster._"

The air in her lungs went abruptly stale at his use of her true surname. How had he discovered it? "You are mistaken—" she began weakly, but he spoke over her.

"I am not," he said. "You've come for the modulator. Are you planning to distract me again with a kiss?"

Heat flushed over her face as she recalled the failed attempt to retrieve the device more than a year before. It had been locked in the library safe in Lord Odin's zephyr. The job should have been easy, a break-in during the twilight of night while the house slept. She'd been surprised by Loki when he entered the room just before she could crack the safe. She'd worn a mask then, too. But he captured her, tore off the black knit thing, and glared down at her, snarl curling his lip. As he was over a foot taller than she, and of formidable strength, she had, in an act of desperation, tipped her chin up and pressed her mouth against his. Darcy and Erik made a clean escape. Jane joined them moments later, leaving behind a stunned aristocrat.

Tonight's gambit was risky. She'd spent the better part of a year infiltrating the gentry under a false name. It had taken her time to rise in the hierarchy enough to receive this prestigious invitation. Loki was not supposed to have been here, but instead captaining a dirigible against a growing rebellion—against _her_ people.

But just as he knew her in an instant despite the mask, so she knew him. His raven hair slicked back, the smooth manner in which he carried himself, the ghost of a smirk as he surveyed the crush until his eyes found her. The crowd had parted for him as he crossed the room to her, and she steeled herself against his presence.

"Are your accomplices with you, then?" he asked, pulling her out of memory. "Doctor Selvig and Miss Lewis."

"I am alone," Jane replied, keeping the tremor from her voice. _How_? How did he know all their secrets?

Loki shook his head. "Liar." He took her for another turn, spinning them both closer to toward the outer doors, his hand an unrelenting vise at her side.

Erik was lost to the crowd, and Darcy... If Jane stalled long enough, perhaps the girl could finish the job. Jane could make this sacrifice, be branded a traitor and executed, if it ultimately meant the freedom of her people. The modulator was all that was needed to finish the bridge to another world. Was it truly theft when it was hers to begin with, crafted by her own hands? Stolen from her—as everything else—simply because she lacked the proper birthright.

She looked up at Loki, silently counting the crimes met out by his ilk against her people, using them as tinder to enflame her hatred. Her kind had been treated as property to be used and abused at whim. Minds and bodies that always belonged to _them—_the sovereign "protectors" who ruled over all. The fire stoked to an inferno within her, she released the skirt of her gown and, curling her fingers into a fist, swung at Loki's face with all her might. Here she signed her death warrant.

Gasps and murmurs rippled through the group of revelers, and Loki turned back to her, mask askew, smiling through bloodied teeth. Jane saw the guards in resplendent uniforms pushing into the throng, advancing on her. _Yes. Pay attention to me_. Anything to save the others.

But Loki held up his hand to stay their pursuit and feigned a laugh. "I deserved that," he said loudly, wiping at his mouth. "Merely a lover's quarrel. We're going somewhere more private to finish our row. Do carry on."

He reached for her elbow, and she jerked away from his touch.

"Don't," he warned in low growl. "I'm keeping you alive."

"And what if I prefer death?" she asked in an equally caustic tone.

"Another lie, Miss Foster."

He ushered her through the outer doors and nodded to the servants posted there to close them again. The din of the fête became muted, and she glanced about the dark room, searching for an escape, as futile as the attempt might be. It was the library, the walls lined with shelves that spanned from floor to ceiling, illuminated by a soft glow coming through the stained glass in the French doors behind her. The end of the vast room was lost to an inky blackness, She remembered her last visit here, the awe she felt at so much learning in one place, the grief and anger that such knowledge was barred to all but the aristocracy and their chosen _pets_.

Warmth churned in her middle as she remembered, too, the feel of his lips over hers—how it was only a beat before he gave into her kiss. How easy it would have been to lose herself in that moment.

He gripped her by the shoulders, forced her to face him. His mask was gone, and his pale eyes held hers as he undid her flimsy disguise. He was beautiful, face drawn in symmetrical angles—geometric perfection. But he was one of _them_, she reminded herself. An oppressor. Worthy only of contempt.

"So much _fire_," he murmured with a ghost of a smile.

It was the only warning he gave before taking her face between his long hands as he leaned down to _inhale_ her. The onslaught was demanding, merciless, and she was caught up in the tide. This was so terribly wrong; she _despised_ him and those like him. And yet, in defiance of this truth, her body acted of its own accord. Her mouth met his eagerly, hungrily, yawning open to be tasted. Her fingers found purchase in the brocaded lapels of his coat, dragging him closer until nothing remained between them.

He broke off the kiss, panting with her as he stared down at her, avarice written in his features. The moment drew out between them in protracted silence. Every invective she would throw in his handsome face shriveled on her tongue when his prurient gaze flicked to her lips. Her eyes fell closed in calescent anticipation.

But no kiss came. Instead she felt something cool and heavy pressed into her hands. She looked down, brows furrowing at the metallic device she held. The modulator! She whipped her head up.

"A trap?" she asked, ashamed she had been so easily maneuvered.

"A game," he answered, retreating a step, then another. "Just a bit of fun."

She frowned in confusion. "I don't—"

"It's really quite simple, Miss Foster," he replied with a lurid smile. "You run. I chase." He pointed toward the shadowed end of the library. "You had better make your escape now. I'll be along in a few days."

He opened the door behind and gave her a bow. "Until we meet again." He slipped into the ballroom, leaving her alone.

She stared after him only a heartbeat before hitching up her skirts and running through the library.

She would not lose. Not to him.

**~FIN~**


	14. Mutually Assured Destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki Laufeyson is the mastermind behind Jane Foster's carefully crafted public image, and it torments them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** PG-13/T  
**Genres:** Human AU, Drama, Angst  
**WARNING:** Implied Infidelity
> 
> **THEME:** Intentional Suffering
> 
> **A/N:** Sometimes when I'm working through personal stuff, angsty things like this come out. I'm sorry!

**MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION**

“Keep walking, Jane. Go on to your room.”

It’s a warning, falling from his tongue in a low baritone. He keeps his gaze trained on the dark mahogany door in front of him, his knuckles turning colorless as he grips a glossy key card at his side. Her breath catches shallow in her chest as she wills her feet to obey, to escape to safety down the hall. But he has ever been the black hole and she’s in a degrading orbit. One day, she’ll be nothing more than molecules scattered across his cold, inky void.

Oh, how badly she wants to be obliterated by him.

Memory slides across her vision of their first meeting—when he entered her lab, tall and impeccably dressed, filling the space from floor to ceiling with his presence. He took her measure as deftly and brutally as an expert surgeon. She was laid bare in that single drop of his gaze, and she hated him. She hated more that immediate and inexplicable magnetic force that yanked her unwillingly toward him—as if her lungs had been burning for want of air her entire life and he was the only source of oxygen.

“You need to use smaller words in your interviews,” he stated without introduction in a clipped British accent. “The educated can’t understand half of what you say, and the average layman, well...” He reached for a lock of hair on her shoulder, spun it around a long, slender finger as he made a noise of disapproval. “You’ll need a new wardrobe, new hairstyle, and perhaps some instruction on how to use cosmetics properly. Although, we’ll keep that light—just enough to enhance what you already have.”

She jerked away from his uninvited touch. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

He grinned and it was nuclear, brilliant and terrible. “Loki Laufeyson. I’m the ‘fixer’ sent by Prism Dynamics,” he said. “You’ve made the Einstein-Rosen Bridge a reality, and you’re about to become the face of a new technology which is going to change the world as we know it. I’m here to make certain that your launch into the spotlight is—” his pale eyes traveled downward as his tongue grazed his bottom lip, “—perfect.”

“I don’t need a fixer,” she argued, stepping back again out of unconscious need to retreat from his crushing gravity.

He exhaled a raspy laugh. “I beg to differ, Miss Foster. Your first foray into the media was, shall we say, _artless_. When I’m finished with you, you’re going to be a beloved household name—the daughter of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk,” he said. “Now, tell me about this doctor you’re seeing.”

She glanced down at the ring on her left hand, one Donald had given her last weekend. Her “yes” had been automatic; they’d been dating for over a year. They were comfortable. They _fit_. It was a rational, logical decision. She repeated these simple facts whenever the barren landscape of her heart demanded to be heard. Soul-consuming passion was a fiction better left to romance novels.

Loki followed her gaze, his mouth pulling briefly in a taut line. “Ah, I see. I will work it into your narrative.” He gave her another smile, this one only marginally less predatory. “Shall we get started, then?”

Six months of hopping around the world, of interviews and presentations, of accepting awards, of testing prototypes—all with her overseer at her side, whispering encouragement, picking apart her fumbles without mercy, helping her work out the seating chart for her upcoming nuptials, laughing at her stupid jokes when she was drunk on exhaustion, sitting on the floor with her in a green room when the homesickness for her old life burned her eyes with tears, suffering her enthusiastic embrace at the first successful field test.

She needs him now, and she could endure the longing that has become a terrible maw in her chest if it were unrequited, but his mask of indifference slipped too often until his desire has become so raw that she has to look away. There are lines that cannot be crossed. Her narrative is set with a charming doctor who tests well with women. Her control over the Einstein-Rosen Bridge project is tied to her public image. Prism Dynamics owns her work thanks to the contract she signed as a hungry, naive scientist. One misstep, and she loses it all.

But the invisible wall of propriety between her and Loki is becoming paper thin. They stand too close, glances lingering a hairsbreadth too long. It’s an endless purgatory and she is on the cusp of fracturing. On the flight here, his hand broached the line between their seats, the back of his fingers brushing against the outside of her thigh. Before she could answer with a caress of her own, he withdrew. She stared at him with an unspoken question, and he replied with a barely perceptible shake of his head, his jaw clenched.

“_Go_, Jane.”

It’s a plea—a prayer—outside of his hotel room, though salvation is beyond their grasp. There is no reprieve from the weight that slowly suffocates them. There never will be.

“I can’t.” She whispers the confession, and his shoulders slump. She takes a hesitant step toward him, knowing that this will likely be the end of them both.

“Stop.” He braces an arm on the door frame as if it’s an anchor against this rudderless moment.

Another step and she’s close enough to catch the ghost of his understated cologne and the scent that is distinctly him. She inhales deeply, stoking the inferno that has been eating her alive so long she can’t remember when it wasn’t there.

“Stop,” he warns again, but it’s too late. He’s turned around, leaning against the jamb, eyes locked with hers as he reaches for the hem of her shirt. He knots a hand it in, encourages her to step between his long legs, not quite touching. Not yet. “This can’t happen.”

She nods in agreement even as her pulse spirals erratically. “I know.”

He wets his lips, and a breath passes. Two. Then: “Tell me that you’re mine.”

She rises on her toes, dragging her palms over his chest to his neck. “Only if you belong to me.”

A smile grows across his mouth in increments.

“Oh, yes.”

**~FIN~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for that ending too!


	15. Truce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fringe scientist Jane Foster suddenly finds herself saddled with two tall men who claim to be Norse gods from mythology, stripped of their powers and punished by being stranded on Earth. She's trying to make due with these crazy brothers, but one of them has gotten on her last nerve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** PG-13/T (due to references to copious alcohol use)  
**Genre:** Canon Divergence AU, Thor 1 AU, Friendship
> 
> **A/N:** This is a repost of an old ficlet I was able to unearth from my old deactivated Tumblr account. I was given the first line from my dear friend, Artemis_Day. There was a second installment in this universe, but sadly that is lost forever.

**TRUCE**

"How many times have I told you that's  _ not _ how you make cereal?"

Loki barely looked up from his position at the breakfast counter, head propped up in his hand as he poured vodka into a bowl with the other. His raven hair was a mess and the skin under his pale eyes was dark as he glared at Jane. He made a show of setting down the bottle, screwing the cap back on, and then gathered it and the bowl in his arms. He huffed a growl as he staggered back to his room.

Jane glanced at Thor, hoping the behemoth of a man next to her had some explanation for his brother.

Thor shook his head. “I have no idea what’s come over him,” he said. “Perhaps being stripped of his magic has driven him mad.”

Jane closed her eyes in exasperation. She was trying her level best to believe that these two ridiculously tall men actually fell out of a wormhole. That they were mythical gods out of Norse legend–made mortal and abandoned on Earth as punishment from their one-eyed dad for some crazy antic that turned out to be an act of war between two realms. The notion was a little beyond what her scientific mind could accept, but both men kept up the pretense (if it even  _ was _ a pretense), even two weeks later.

“This is getting out of hand.” Jane stalked off toward Loki’s room. The guy was either drunk or hungover all the time, and she’d had  _ enough _ . If he wanted to be a lush for the rest of his life, fine. He could find his own place and pay for his liquor with his own money.

She didn’t bother to knock, but threw the door open and stepped inside. Her building tirade died in her throat, though, as her gaze landed on the lanky self-proclaimed God of Mischief. The bottle and bowl sat on the flimsy nightstand by his bed, forgotten. He was on the floor, head tilted back against the wall, glassy stare pointed at nothing in particular. He’d been all sneers and biting comments since the night he and his brother appeared out of thin air. She’d never seen him so vulnerable. So  _ bleak _ . It made her chest ache with compassion.

He swiveled his head in her direction. “Am I to suffer another matronly lecture?” he asked in a voice devoid of emotion–as if donning his sardonic mask was too much of an effort. “I’d rather skip this one, if you don’t mind. They’re getting rather tedious.”

She studied him a moment longer before crossing the room and plopping down next to him. He cocked a brow, but didn’t argue. That was something at least. She stuck out her hand to shake. “Truce?”

His other brow joined the first as he stared at her hand. “Why?” The suspicion in his tone made her wonder how it was possible that he and Thor were from the same family. Thor, though arrogant, was open, trusting. Loki was the opposite.

Jane hid her growing frustration with a shrug, though she kept her hand up. “Because I want to be friends.”

Loki let out a brittle laugh. “You–a mere mortal, an ant I could crush under my boot–want to be friends with me, a  _ god _ ?”

She almost smacked him. He always knew just what buttons to push. But she wasn’t going to let him win this time. “Yep. Take it or leave it.”

He huffed another laugh, this one more tentative. Almost as if he was surprised. “Fine. You can have your truce–for what little it’s worth,” he muttered, clasping her forearm briefly rather than shaking her hand.

“Good.” She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them. “Now that’s settled, as your friend–”

“Oh,  _ wonderful _ .”

“As your  _ friend _ ,” she talked over whatever sarcastic comment he was about to make, “I’ve got to tell you: it’s time to get your head out of your ass.”

He blinked at her, dumbfounded, and then threw back his head and bellowed with laughter. “You truly have no self-preservation, do you?” he asked when he sobered, but there was something in his eyes. A light that hadn’t been there before.

“One could argue the same about you, Loki,” she countered.

He seemed to consider it, tongue and teeth grazing over his bottom lip as he gave her a small, genuine smile. It was startling,  _ breathtaking _ . “I like you, Jane Foster.” But then, he turned away, the moment over. “I will take your  _ friendly _ advice under consideration.” It was a dismissal, and she knew better than to linger.

“You’d better.” She left him alone.

The next morning, Loki scowled at Jane as usual, but she grinned back at him. Because he’d poured milk in his cheerios instead of vodka. Maybe a god needed a friend after all.

**~FIN~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought. :-)


	16. Unwelcome Accident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s never a dull moment for Jane, not since the so-called exiled princes of Asgard showed up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** T  
**Genre:** Humor, Thor 1 Canon Divergence AU, Both-verse
> 
> **A/N:** This is a sequel to "Truce" (in the previous chapter).

**UNWELCOME ACCIDENT**

“Is this a perk of being _ friends_?”

At the raspy, British-esque question, Jane opened one bleary eye, then the other in an attempt to orient herself.

“If so,” continued that familiar timbre, “I find that I’m quite amenable.”

With that, the world came into instant, piercing focus. Jane swallowed back a gasp. She was not in her bed, but lying on the worn, second-hand couch in her living room, snuggled up against _ Loki_. No, “snuggled” was too generous. They were practically a human pretzel, his arm curled around her waist, their legs knotted together.

How? _ How? _

She pushed against his chest—why was it _ bare?_—in a futile attempt to disentangle herself, but he held her tight.

“Oh, Jane.” Loki clucked his tongue as though he were disappointed. “I thought you were showing me just how _ friendly _you and I could be.”

“Let me go,” she bit out through gritted teeth as she shoved at him hard. This time he didn’t resist.

Which meant she tumbled to the floor, landing on her ass. Loki leaned over the edge of the couch, wearing that stupid smirk that had become a fixture on his angular face in the last couple of weeks.

What the hell had happened last night? 

She’d been working at the lab, blessedly free of distraction for the first time in three weeks. Erik had agreed to keep the Brothers Norse occupied for the evening. Darcy was recuperating from a cold. Or faking sick to avoid coming in on a Friday night. Either way, Jane didn’t care.

But then the phone call. 

“Jane, you’d better get down here,” Erik had said without preamble. They’d gone to the local watering hole and before he could say more, there was a shout of “Another!” followed by the crash of breaking glass.

The scene at the bar was chaos when Jane arrived. Thor was demanding that someone “have that mechanical bard play another rousing ditty” because “it will be far more entertaining as I recount the time my brother and I defeated Thrym.” The patrons cheered the two on as they began to weave the tale. It wasn’t long before they were arguing over details, jostling each other, bumping into tables, knocking over more glasses to join the glittering shards of other shattered tumblers and pints.

“I’m sorry, Jane,” Erik said next to her. “I didn’t think it would get out of hand.”

She shook her head. She’d learned to never underestimate the trouble these two idiots could get into. Carefully picking her way through the glass, she yelled their names to interrupt yet another scuffle over details.

“Jane Foster!” Thor exclaimed with comical exuberance. “Look, brother! T’is the Lady Jane!”

Loki gave her a smile that was beautiful and sincere, if a little inebriated. “All hail the Lady Jane!”

The others shouted, though Jane was pretty sure they had no idea what was going on.

She rolled her eyes. “Come on, boys. It’s time to go home.” 

Erik shooed her away when it looked like the _ very _ unhappy bartender was going to call for blood. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

She went outside to meet the troublemakers. The two couldn’t have been more different in looks and disposition. Thor looked the part of a half-wild mountain man with barely tamed long, blond hair, a full beard, wearing jeans, boots, and a plaid flannel. Loki, after he’d stopped wallowing in misery, had taken to dressing in whatever business casual clothes he could find in the thrift store. Tonight was a dark button-down with the sleeves rolled up and black slacks. Despite his refined, clean-shaven, slicked back veneer, there was something almost feral beneath the surface. While Thor was less intimidating than he appeared, Loki seemed far more dangerous than he looked.

Not that Jane was afraid of him. Erik called it a lack of self-preservation. She called it a matter of desensitization; it was hard to be frightened of someone who wrestled his brother for the bathroom every morning and pouted like a five-year-old when he lost.

The ride back to her place had quickly devolved into a long ode to “the fair Lady Jane.” Thor started things off with her “daring” rescue of the exiled princes of Asgard. Loki took it upon himself to extol her virtues. And Jane? She wanted a singularity to open up in the middle of the road when he waxed on about her “sorrel locks and unblemished skin that compliments the grander allure of her clever mind.”

If Darcy didn’t live in a studio apartment above the garage of Mrs. Kensington, Puente Antiguo’s resident moral enforcer and town instigator, Jane would gladly take her assistant up on the offer to let the brothers move in with her. That is, if Jane was sure the three of them wouldn’t burn down the place during an epic party. 

None of this explained how she’d ended up cuddling with the self-proclaimed God of Mischief.

Oh, right. There was that documentary.

She’d been too mentally exhausted to return to the lab. After changing into a pair of sweats and t-shirt, she planted herself in front of the television. Loki came out of his room, adorned in pajama bottoms and nothing else just when her channel surfing landed on some expert rambling on about Norse mythology.

Loki grinned, looking far less drunk than he was a half hour ago as he settled on the couch next to her. She blamed his height and the ridiculous metabolism that clearly kept his body fat low enough to have the kind of muscle definition that rivaled his burlier brother’s—if a bit leaner. Something else on the list of things that Jane had become desensitized to. Completely. One hundred percent.

“Oh, dear,” he said a few minutes into the program. “Have you finally decided to believe us?”

She snorted, her ready denial right at the tip of her tongue as it always was, but she swallowed it back in the next breath. They’d kept up the ruse for nearly a month now. If it was a con, what could they hope to get from a broke astrophysicist on the fringe of the scientific community? Granted, they’d stuck around because she was working toward building “a Midgardian Bifrost,” but neither had been suspiciously eager to get their hands on her research. The only other reasonable explanation was mental illness, but that didn’t fit either.

Her thoughts cut back to the printout in her lab. How it looked distinctly like two bodies falling through that inexplicable light storm. It was impossible. Wasn’t it?

She turned to Loki. “Okay,” she said. “Are they getting any of it right?” She nodded toward the television.

“Hardly anything at all,” he replied, stretching out on the couch, forcing her to scoot back into the armrest opposite him. God or not, the man was _ spoiled _ . “Wherever did you get the notion that _ I _gave birth to Odin’s steed?”

He picked apart other stories. Apparently, he hadn’t fathered a snake or a wolf or the keeper of Helheim. He refused to elaborate on Sigyn, his supposed wife, though. And he went completely still as the narrator spoke of his mythological counterpart’s origins as a frost giant. Jane’s heart faltered for a beat at that visceral reaction. It had been so disturbingly _ authentic _.

Could he actually be _ the _ Loki?

The goat story seemed to snap him out of his funk, and while he claimed that, too, was fiction, he had her skip back so he could laugh at it a second time.

“Taking notes for future reference?”

“Well, yes.”

A drowsy, warm feeling washed over her as they switched to _ The Expanse _ after the program ended. That was all she remembered. They must have fallen asleep and somehow become tangled with each other.

Loki rose to his feet with a long stretch, then raised a brow at her still on the floor. Before she could protest, he pulled her up to him, cinching an arm around her waist. He brushed a lock of hair from her eyes, scrutinizing her face as a smile that promised a whole lot of trouble pulled the corners of his mouth.

“Oh, I _ do _ like this,” he murmured. “I accept, Jane Foster.” Without further explanation, he abruptly released her and made for his room.

_What?_ Jane scrambled after him, cursing when her toe caught the leg of the coffee table. “Accept what!?” she yelled, but his door slamming shut was the only response.

Thor peeked out of the bathroom, disheveled with puffy eyes, and Jane rounded on him.

“Please tell me,” she said, “that accidentally falling asleep together on the couch while watching television is not some kind of marriage proposal or mating ritual for Norse gods!”

Thor let out a loud, guttural laugh. “No, of course not. I’m sure Loki is just having a bit of fun.”

Jane blew out a heavy sigh. “Good.”

“Although…”

“Don’t. Just,” she said, holding up a hand. “No. Nope. Nuh-uh.”

She hobbled past Thor to her room, calmly closed herself in, and then screamed into her pillow.

**~FIN~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this crack-y thing! XD


	17. Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Sequel to Comfort) Jane is in the library when Loki unexpectedly seeks her out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** K+  
**Genre:** Alternate Universe, Friendship  
**Prompt from beautifulsoulsublime (on Tumblr):** "Who sighs and rests their head on their partner’s shoulder while the other pulls them closer?”
> 
> **A/N:** This is a sequel to [Comfort](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20397862/chapters/48382240).

**PEACE**

Jane recalls with stark clarity the moment they came for her—ethereal beings clad in gilded armor. The leader with molten copper in his gaze as he announced that she had been chosen as tributary—not just to serve the Aesir, the self-proclaimed protectors of the nine realms, but to earn her place among them. She recalls standing in the gleaming throne room of Asgard, heart thrumming, tears she refused to weep stinging in her eyes as the Queen walked a lazy circle around her, taking her measure before declaring Jane worthy.

The twin sons of Odin stood on the dais, a contrast of shining day and starless night. One smiling, the other giving her a cursory glance under the guise of apathy. She had little idea that one day the latter would become both her foe—with the cruel pranks he called “harmless”—and a surprising ally when the skies over the Realm Eternal foamed in the rage of _ Rebirth _.

She idly drifts through the stacks in the library, fingertips caressing the ageless leather tomes as memory prickles her skin with electricity. She no longer counts time, the days, the weeks, the years that pass her by—not since she bit into the bittersweet flesh of Idun’s apple and her mortality slipped from her like water from a sieve. She can’t say how long it’s been since the God of Mischief and Mayhem circled his arms around her and held her against his chest, soothing away the leftover fears from her human life. 

He said nothing when she slunk into his rooms the next night and the one after as _ líf skepna _ carried on their violent nocturnal displays. Such a reckless gambit that had been, asking for Loki’s generosity without first establishing the cost. He has yet to call in her debt, but she still believes the truth she told him—that his price will likely be more favorable than the one his guileless brother would have required.

There. She pulls a thick volume from the shelf, no longer noting the absence of dust with surprise, though she doubts this book has been touched in centuries. Too little is foreign to her in this world. She remembers Midgard—_Earth_—in abstract now. Ephemeral images of chasing after anomalies in the twinkling night. She barrs other specters from her thoughts before they can crush her with grief, the faces of those she left behind, and makes her way to one of the recamiers near the wall-to-vaulted-ceiling windows.

She flips through the tome, a thorough discourse on light bending with _ seidr_. There is still enough of the scientist in her that she cannot accept that this power, this _ magic _ simply _ is_. She wants to understand it, _ quantify _ it, no matter how Frigga sighs with long-suffering and Loki laughs in derision.

Footsteps whisper in the cavernous room with a measured gait, and she glances up from her studies, air congealing in her chest. Loki stops a foot or two short of her, the picture of beleaguered warrior, obsidian hair wild, face streaked with crimson and ash, leather armor scratched, gouged. She whispers his name, and he shakes his head at the concern in her tone.

“The rebellion in Niflheim has been dispatched,” he says. “No doubt Thor will regale us all with his heroism at tonight’s banquet.” Bitterness licks in his words as it always does when it comes to his brother.

With a frown, she examines the red marring his features. “Are you hurt? Have you been to the healers?”

His mouth curves in a vinegary smile. “What’s this? Compassion for your tormentor? Don’t grow soft on me now, Jane.” It’s a taunt, meant to set alight the oil that flows between them—a misdirection from the exhaustion and pain that rings his pale eyes.

She’ll play his game, not that there has ever been a choice. “You’re telling me that you’ve come to me like this—” she waves a hand toward him, “—so I can gloat over your injuries? That’s unexpectedly considerate of you.” In truth, she can’t begin to guess why he’s presented himself in such a vulnerable state. There is undoubtedly a reason, some new ploy he’s conjured in that cunning mind of his. That he may have finally come to _ trust _ her is an absurd notion.

And yet, she almost hopes for it. What a strange revelation that is.

He drags his tongue over his bottom lip, huffing a dry laugh, and settles next to her on the lounge. A beat passes in silence and then another, and then he lets out a long, thready breath. Her heart jumps when he sags against her, head on her shoulder. Nudged by long-dormant instinct, she tips her head to his, hand questing to his back to rub lightly at the corded knots beneath his armor. She blinks at a startling well of tears; she’s forgotten this kind of ease, this simple comfort between friends. Even when she’d sought him those nights some time ago, it had been a foolhardy decision to embrace a viper while hoping that she would survive his eventual bite.

This, however, tastes faintly of true camaraderie.

When she reaches up to brush through his dark locks—crusted with sweat and the grime of battle—he grasps her fingers, twining his with them with another weighted sigh.

Later, after she’s called for cloth and a basin of warm water, he lays in her lap, reading from the book as she gingerly washes the caked blood from his face.

“Mastery requires first that you see beyond natural sight...”

Jane smiles. That is her Gift, the reason she was stolen from her home—to see what others cannot. And she thinks, for the first time, she sees _ him_.

**~FIN~**


	18. Plus One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane gets roped into being Loki's "plus one" for a wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** "I need a date for this wedding" (from averbaldumpingground on Tumblr)  
**Rating:** T  
**Genre:** Modern AU, Friendship

**PLUS ONE**

“Stop fidgeting.”

Jane scowled up at Loki. “I can’t believe I agreed to this.” She tried to adjust the dress he demanded that she wear—sorry, _ asked _ her to wear (while nixing every other option his personal shopper presented them with). “I can’t breathe in this thing.”

The corner of his mouth curved up as his gaze dipped in a lazy perusal of her. “What is it you ladies say? Something about beauty being pain?”

She snorted. “I’m not that kind of woman.” Why again did he want her to be his plus-one for a glitzy wedding?

“You are today.” He crooked an elbow toward her. “Shall we, Jane?”

She made a face at him before linking her arm with his.

The venue was opulent—there wasn’t another word for it. (Well, maybe “decadent.”) Thousands of twinkle lights woven in a silk organza canopy, hiding the ceiling. Huge bouquets on stands dotting the aisle on either side, full of flowers and sprigs of foliage practically dripping to the floor as if bowing in preparation for the bride. Gilded chairs set up for the loved ones were covered with shining white fabric held in place with a large pale rose ribbons, tied in a perfect bow in the back.

A man wearing a bluetooth device and carrying an iPad stepped forward, blocking their path. “Bride or groom?”

“Bride,” Loki answered. Did he sound a little terse? “Loki Odinson and my guest, Jane Foster.”

The man looked up from his iPad with an overly ingratiating smile. “Of course, Mr. Odinson and Miss Foster.” His gaze flicked toward her like an afterthought. “Right this way, please.” 

He led them to the left, along the wall until they reached three rows from the front. He offered Loki a nod, gesturing toward the others already seated there before leaving them to get settled. Loki laid a hand at the small of her back and encouraged her forward. As she drew closer to the group, a beautiful middle-aged woman stood up, gaze pointed over Jane’s head. Surprise flickered across her features.

“Loki!” she said. “You came.” The statement sounded more like a question, as if his presence wasn’t expected.

“Yes, mother. I came.” 

Jane spun around and mouthed, “_Mother?_” He’d told her that this wasn’t a family affair, that it was just a friend’s wedding.

He glanced down at her, expression inscrutable, then looked back at his mother. “Allow me to introduce Doctor Jane Foster. Jane this is my mother, Frigga Odinson.”

Jane swallowed down her nerves and offered a hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you.”

Frigga’s brows lifted. Apparently this was another surprise. “Doctor Foster, I’ve heard so much about you!” she said, taking Jane’s hand in both of hers with a wide, genuine grin. “I’m glad to finally meet you.”

"You’ve heard about me?” Jane shot Loki another look, but he only gave her a half-shrug in return. 

“The brilliant astrophysicist who’s on the verge of cracking wormhole theory? Of course!” Frigga tugged Jane to sit down next to her. “I want to hear all about it.”

Jane smiled, wondering just how this friendly woman managed to raise the stubborn, arrogant knucklehead behind her. (Had he really told his mother about her? Had he really called her _ brilliant_?)

Frigga monopolized her for the next half-hour as the rest of the guests arrived. Jane was introduced to Loki’s brother, Thor, who seemed to have gotten all of their mother’s charm. She met Loki’s father, who barely acknowledged her and had an air of arrogant disinterest. _ That _ actually explained Loki.

The wedding began with a string quartet. Everything was perfect down to the twin flower girls dropping rose petals tipped in gold down the aisle. When quartet struck up Pachelbel Canon in D, Loki stiffened next to her. He stood with the other guests, but didn’t turn as the bride entered. She looked like a princess, with a veil and train that extended several feet behind her, all those tiny pearls and faux diamonds catching the light.

A poetry reading came next, then the vows. Sigyn and Theoric swore their undying devotion to each other, and it would have been beautiful if Jane actually knew these people—and if Loki didn’t glare at the couple as if he could turn them to ash with his mind. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding when the officiator announced the pair could seal their union with a kiss.

Now she had to get through the reception, and they could be done with this weirdness and go back to one-upping each other with science.

The reception line was a blur, then it was cocktails, dinner, toasts, and making polite conversation with a bunch of strangers. Loki was strangely silent through most of it. He was usually silver-tongued, the master of manipulating social situations to his advantage. She had half a mind to check him for a crank in his back in case he’d been replaced with an automaton. Several times she had to elbow him to get him to respond.

It was some time after the wedding party performed a mash-up of *NSYNC’s greatest hits—complete with the dances—that some guy at their table, Fandral, had made enough use of the open bar to have loosened his lips. 

“That was almost you up there,” he waved his tumbler of scotch toward Loki. “We all thought it would be with the moon-eyes you made at each other since childhood.”

A giant of a man joined Fandral with a boisterous laugh. “You remember in Year 11 when we locked them in the closet and didn’t come back for them for an hour?”

A tall, dark-haired woman with striking eyes—Jane couldn’t remember her name—interjected, “No doubt Sigyn finally realized that she could do far better—”

Jane stopped listening, frowning at Loki. Why didn’t he say anything? Verbally eviscerate them with clever insults like he did whenever she went toe-to-toe with him? Where was the overconfident bastard? She couldn’t find him in that hollow gaze of his, and that felt so _ wrong_. She called him the bane of her existence, but the truth was, she kind of liked how sharp he kept her. Now he was as dull as a butterknife.

She stood up, and grasped him by the cuff of his jacket. “Please excuse us.”

She dragged him to the dance floor, did her best to loop her hands around his neck—even in heels, she was dwarfed by him. It was a beat before his fingers curled around her waist, swaying her to the music. 

“Okay, what the hell was that?” she hissed. “Did you bring me to your ex’s wedding? Why did you tell me it was a friend?”

He breathed a hollow laugh. “Because she _ is _ a family friend.” At her flat look, he added, “And my ex.”

“_Great_,” Jane muttered. “And what, you’re still in love with her? Is that why you’ve been having a pity party for one? Are you using me in some twisted revenge plot? Because I did _ not _ sign up for making a scene on someone’s special day. I don’t care how bad your break-up was.”

He laughed again, and this time it was more reminiscent of the man she knew. He opened his mouth to say something, but it was lost when someone called to him.

“Loki!”

It was Sigyn, the gorgeous bride. Tall and statuesque like all the rest of Loki’s acquaintances. She crossed the room toward them, and Loki let go of Jane. He wore a plastic smile as he greeted his ex.

“Congratulations, Sigyn.”

“You came,” she said.

“You invited me.”

“Yes, but...” She glanced at Jane. “Hi, I don’t believe we’ve met.”

This was so _ awkward_. Jane was going to make Loki pay for this later. “I’m Jane Foster.”

Sigyn’s mouth rounded in an unspoken _ oh_. “I... yes, Jane Foster from Harvard, right?”

“Yep. That’s me.” She wanted to yank Loki away and demand more answers. How did so many of these people know about her? “Congratulations. It was a beautiful ceremony.”

Sigyn stared at her for an uncomfortable beat. “Thank you.” She turned her gaze to Loki. “It seems we both got what we wanted.” Though polite, there was something brittle in the edge of her tone.

“Indeed,” Loki returned in kind. “Remind me, Sigyn, when _ exactly _did you get what you wanted?”

Sigyn’s breath caught as if his words were a knife in her gut. “It’s been years.”

“My apologies, I was unaware there was a statute of limitation for—”

“Don’t,” Sigyn said. “You’re not being fair.”

Loki’s expression turned positively feral. Jane had only seen him look that wild with rage once, back at grad school when one of the other students had thrown a fit over Jane winning a prized fellowship. The chauvinist had implied that she’d traded special “favors” because “we all know the bitch doesn’t have the brains for this kind of work.” Loki’s fist connected with his jaw before he could utter another disgusting word.

Loki leaned over the petulant jerk and, with a chilling calm, said, “I wonder what it will take to remove that bigoted stick out of your arse. Shall we theorize?” He flexed his hand.

Jane hadn’t needed him to stand up for her, but it was nice to have someone on her side. (It was why that, despite their rivalry, despite the barbs they shot at each other over science, despite how sociopathic he could seem at times, she trusted him.)

Sigyn had awakened that beast that lived inside of him, and if Jane didn’t intervene a scene was most definitely going to be made.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the other woman. “I don’t want to be rude, but we really need to get going.” That snapped Loki out of whatever he was about to say or do. He drew his brows together as he met her gaze. “Remember? I was going to show you the latest batch of data my model generated.”

“Right,” he said, catching on. “And the comparative analysis—”

“—is probably going to take most of the night,” she finished with relief. “Anyway, nice to meet you, Sigyn. Best wishes for a happy future.”

Jane locked an arm with Loki and pulled him away as Sigyn offered them a stunned farewell.

She let out a long breath once they were at the coat check, glad to have successfully removed the spark from the powder keg (or was it the other way around?). “You owe me,” she said as Loki gave their tickets to the clerk.

He dipped his head. “You turned out a singular performance, Jane Foster.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “I have one question.”

“Only one?” A smirk played on his lips, and she liked that he was behaving more like himself again.

“How did she know about me? _ What _ does she know about me?”

Loki helped her into her coat. “Sigyn has always suspected that my relationship with you is something more than colleagues.”

_ What? _ Jane’s eyes rounded as the implication hit her. “Wait, wait, wait. She thought you were cheating on her? With _ me_?” She ran a hand over her face as another revelation bowled over her. “This _ was _ a twisted revenge scheme. Bringing the woman she thinks you had an affair with as a date to her wedding. Are you _ serious_?”

“Well, yes,” he said, completely unperturbed by the drama he had created. “It seemed perfectly reasonable, considering she just married _ her _ illicit paramour.”

Jane shook her head. Nuts. These people were _ nuts_.

“Don’t look at me like that.” He tied her scarf around her neck. “You’ve never been my lover.”

"Thank god for that,” she said, reaching up to fix the collar of his double-breasted overcoat. “Even the idea of it is ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

Her knee-jerk objection lost its voice as he held her gaze with troubling intensity. _ Was _ it ridiculous, this idea of something more between them? She couldn’t answer that question, didn’t want to touch it.

“Come along,” he said, making for the exit. “We’ve data waiting for us.”

“What?” Jane scrambled after him. “No! I only said that as an excuse. I’m not letting you anywhere near my work, Odinson!”

“Too late, Foster. You’re stuck with me for a lab partner for the night.”

She huffed in frustration. “If you steal any of my data, I will set fire to your lab!”

“Promises, promises.”

**~FIN~**


	19. Seven Minutes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After learning that Jane has led a sheltered life, Darcy introduces her to an important rite of passage that she's missed: Spin the Bottle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** T  
**Genre:** College AU, Non-Magical AU
> 
> **A/N:** chiaworlds requested on Tumblr: _“Of you still accept prompt, no 34 (spin the bottle) for lokane, please_ 😍😍😍”

**SEVEN MINUTES**

Jane’s having second thoughts as Darcy drags her down the stairs leading to the basement of somebody’s house. There’s a faint haze of smoke at the base, a mixture of burning tobacco and something slightly more mood-altering. Muted voices and the quiet strains of a guitar sound as they enter the dim room.

The place looks like a storage room for thrift store rejects with a worn, mismatched couch and loveseat, covered with a hodgepodge of crocheted afghans that might have been trendy in the 1970’s. The finish on the coffee table is scuffed, dotted with dozens of overlapping ring marks—those Jane can see beneath the bottles set in a haphazard collection, a bong or two among them. The guitar player sits on a lumpy futon in the corner, dark, wavy hair veiling his face as he plucks a morose tune. Others are sprawled across the sofas or sitting cross-legged on the floor, gazes locked on the video game someone is playing.

“Darcy!” A tall, bearded guy stands up from the loveseat and nimbly steps over the legs of the others to greet the petite girl with a crushing embrace. After he releases her, he turns his gaze on Jane. “You’ve brought a friend!”

“Yep,” Darcy agrees, curling an arm around Jane’s shoulders. “This is my friend, Jane. Jane, this is Fandral.”

Fandral takes Jane’s hand and, with a flourishing bow, places a kiss over the top of her knuckles. “Pleasure,” he says with a wide smile.

She can’t help smiling back. He gives off a “ladies man” vibe, but there’s something utterly likeable about him. Or maybe it’s a contact high from the thin fog trapped in the room

“Everyone!” Fandral shouts. “Say hi to Jane!”

The others glance up, giving her a bare nod or a simple “s’up” before returning to the game. The guitar player doesn’t bother to pause his angsty tune.

“That’s Thor,” Darcy says, pointing at one of the two behemoths leaning forward, controllers gripped in thick hands. “And next to him is Peter.” She rattles off other names, gesturing toward the group. Volstagg, Hogun, Sif, Gamora, and others Jane doesn’t quite catch. Darcy nods toward the musician in the corner. “I think you actually know Loki.”

Jane’s stomach drops at the name. Loki chooses then to look up, eyes locking with hers, his expression unreadable. A beat passes, then he’s back to his music, fingers dancing over the strings in another mournful melody. Her jaw clenches at his dismissal. Ugh. So arrogant. But then, what else can she expect?

_ “Bull shit.” _

_ Jane whipped around in her seat to find the source of the rude interruption. She’d just finished giving an impeccable explanation supporting the latest theory of Dark Energy. “Excuse me?” _

_ A lanky student in the back of the room leaned forward. He wore dark clothes, raven hair tied back at the nape of his neck. His skin was pale in stark contrast, and he interlaced fingers painted with black lacquer, smirk playing on his features. “I said: Bull. Shit.” He stared at her with a dare written in his angular features. _

_ “While I encourage healthy debate in class, Mister…” Professor Selvig left space for the egotistical jerk to fill in the blank. _

_ “Loki Laufeyson,” he answered, gaze never wavering from Jane. _

_ “Mister Laufeyson, you’ll need to back up your rebuttal with more than bovine excrement.” _

_ Loki’s smile stretched wider. “Oh, I’ve _ plenty _ more to say.” _

“What’s this, dudes?” Darcy asks, shaking Jane out of that awful memory. “I promised Jane a _ real _ party! She’s never been to one before.”

Loki glances up again, brow raised, and Jane wishes a vortex would suddenly appear and suck her into another universe. One where she wasn’t homeschooled thanks to her father’s constant travels, where she actually experienced normal things like spring formals and sneaking out with friends in the middle of the night. A universe where Loki isn’t practically screaming “pathetic little nerd” with the corner of his mouth tipped up. Even better: a universe where he doesn’t exist at all.

“Gee, thanks” she mutters to Darcy, but her friend ignores her.

“We need better music—and no more video games.” Darcy pulls out her phone. “Where’s your bluetooth speaker, Fandy? We’ve got to dance! Oh, and get Jane something to drink!”

“No, I don’t—” Jane tries to object.

“Yes, you are,” Darcy says. “You skipped over all these vital rites of passages, and I’m the spirit guide who’s gonna get you back on track!”

Jane kind of regrets that she confided in her friend during closing at the coffee shop they both work at. Darcy’s horror over Jane’s sheltered childhood has turned into a mission.

Loud, bass-heavy music fills the space, and Jane is handed a plastic cup half-filled with something the color of amber. Darcy stares her down until she takes a tentative sip. She scrunches her nose in disgust. It tastes awful, and it _ burns_, but Darcy is tipping the cup back up by the base. Each swig that Jane gulps down is a smidgen less terrible, but that might be because her tongue is going numb.

Her brain is too, just a little.

Dancing is a blur, a mess of bodies and limbs moving to that thumping beat. Someone moved the coffee table, pushed the sofas back, and everyone converged on each other in the center. No, not everyone. Loki stands just outside, his arms crossed over his chest, features slack in a bored expression. 

Feeling bold, Jane disentangles herself from the others and steps up to him, barking a laugh. “Who’s the sad nerd now?” she shouts over the din.

His eyes narrow and, without warning, he grabs the sides of her shirt, yanking her into him. “By all means, let’s dance.”

She shoves at him, but he keeps a tight grip on her waist as he drags her into the gyrating group. 

She’s saved when Darcy abruptly yells, “Oh my god! How could I…? Shut off the music!”

The silence that follows is jarring as everyone waits for Darcy to explain. “Spin the bottle!” she says.

“Darcy.” Gamora rolls her eyes—least, Jane’s pretty sure that one’s Gamora. “We’re not in middle school anymore.”

“Yeah, but here me out,” Darcy says. “Jane’s never been to a party, like ever _ ever_. Not the awkward tween ones. Not the underage-drinking-in-high-school ones. She really needs to catch up with the rest of us young adults. Plus, it’ll be fun! OH! And we can do Seven Minutes in Heaven, too!”

Jane’s cheeks flush with heat. She may not have participated in these “rites of passages” as Darcy called them, but she knows about them. And she is _ not _ kissing a stranger. No. Nuh-uh.

As if reading her thoughts, Darcy grabs her hand and pulls her down to the floor with her. “Come one,” Darcy murmurs. “_One _ time, okay? I promise I’ll never ask you for anything ever again.”

Jane gives her a flat look.

“Okay, okay,” Darcy says, raising her hands. “I promise I’ll never ask you to do _ this _ again.” She turns back to the group settling around them in a circle. “The question is: public displays of affection or locked in a dark closet for seven minutes?”

Jane glances at Loki as the debate ensues and he stares back at her, wearing that stupid smirk. For a breath, she’s tempted to grab the empty bottle on the floor at chuck it at him. She hates his attractive face so much right now. That _ might _ be the alcohol talking, but she doesn’t care.

“Okay!” Darcy claps. “It’s the player’s choice, then. Let’s do this!” She reaches for the bottle and sends it into a lazy spiral. The narrow end slows to point at Fandral, and Darcy lets out a little cheer. She leans forward and he meets her in the middle with a kiss that only gives Jane a twinge of discomfort.

Okay, maybe this isn’t going to be so bad.

Others are paired up by the bottle, and no one opts for the closet. Volstagg grabs Hogun by the shirt and plants and quick, sloppy kiss on him. Sif and Gamora’s lip-lock has the guys whooping. Jane holds her breath when it’s Loki’s turn to spin. 

_ Please, don’t let it be me. Please, don’t let it be me. _

The bottle stops on her, and he bears his teeth in a predatory grin that sends a chill down her spine.

“Closet!” she shouts, voice trembling. She blushes as all eyes fall on her. “Um, I want the seven minutes.” Too late, she realizes how that sounds—especially when Loki raises his brows in twisted delight—but it’s the only way she can get out of actually kissing him.

“Jumping into the deep end. I like it!” Darcy beams in approval as she stands and crosses to the far corner of the room. She opens a door, glances inside, and says, “There’s enough room in there.”

Jane swallows down the anxiety swirling in her gut and marches up to Loki, who hasn’t moved an inch. “Too chicken?”

He shakes his head. “No,” he says, rising to his full height. “I thought I’d give you a chance to change your mind.”

“Nope.” She walks to the closet, not waiting for his response.

Her heart stops when the door shuts behind him. It’s pitch-black in here, and she holds her arms in front of herself to ward him off should he go in for the kill. He doesn’t though, and a beat or two passes before he broaches the silence with a whisper.

“First time?”

“No,” she shoots back quietly. It’s not, though her first time hardly counts. It was at an international STEM conference for teens. She can’t even remember the guy’s name now, but the kiss had been pretty lack-luster—kind of gross if she’s being honest. She hasn’t had any real interest in repeating the experience since.

“I suppose we’d better get to it,” he murmurs, and she can feel him inch closer.

“Stop,” she says. “We are not kissing. We’re not doing _ anything_.”

“Oh?” He breathes a soft, raspy laugh that brushes against her cheek. He smells minty and clean despite his perpetually disheveled appearance. “Too chicken?”

Her pulse pounds in her ears as she’s frozen with indecision. She doesn’t want him to win. He’ll be smug about her not kissing him, but then he’ll be smug if she does. Gah! She _ despises _ him.

“You wish,” she says, then tentatively reaches for him. Her hands find the thin fabric of his t-shirt, and she pulls him toward her.

He comes willingly, fingers brushing across her shoulders and up her neck until they settle on her jaw. She braces herself for contact, for that drooling suction she’d experienced before, but his lips on hers isn’t like that at all. It’s gentle, a caress that sends an electrical current through her entire body in crackling jolts. Oh, god. Oh, _ god_. 

_ This _ is what it’s supposed to be like?

He tilts his head, and somehow the angle has her gasping against his mouth. The kiss becomes more insistent, urgent, like she’s drowning and he’s the only air she can breathe. And it’s still not enough. She’s clawing at him, desperate to get closer, and his hands are at the back of her thighs, lifting her up as he presses her against the wall. More. She needs _ more _.

“Hot _ damn! _”

Loki breaks off the kiss, and Jane becomes aware that the door is open, Darcy standing on the other side, eyes wide with shock. Loki glances over his shoulder, then back at Jane. He draws a line across his lip with the pad of his thumb and grins as he steps back, letting Jane drop down on her own feet.

“This game is far more fun than I remember it being,” he says. “Let’s play again soon, darling.”

He leaves without another word.

Jane covers her face with a groan. What has she done?

**~FIN~**


	20. Sigma Phi Delta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Sequel to Seven Minutes] After their make-out in the closet, Loki's gone back to acting as nothing more than Jane's academic rival. That is, until Darcy decides that a frat party is the next item Jane needs to check off of her list.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** T  
**Genre:** College AU, Non-magical AU, Humor, Romance
> 
> **Prompt from Fookasu221:**“You know, I re-read today Seven Minutes, your College AU with the ‘spin the bottle’ prompt, and I gotta say, I love it! It’s great, it’s so much fun, and it’d be amazing if it gets any kind of continuation. Maybe you’ll consider it sometime?”
> 
> **A/N:** I hope this suits, my friend! (Also, many apologies to anyone associated with Sigma Phi Delta; I've taken generous artistic license here.)

**SIGMA PHI DELTA  
**

After eight months of working here, Jane no longer hears the clank of coffee mugs, the burble and hiss of the espresso machine. The Grind is a couple of blocks off campus, a hole-in-the-wall shop that attracts a mellow, studious crowd with mismatched overstuffed chairs and couches. The dark wood paneling, rusty brick walls, pendant lighting with deep orange and yellow globes gives off a comfortable, languid vibe. This isn’t the kind of place to rattle off a three paragraph order and then dash off to class. 

Jane lucked out landing a job here. They don’t normally hire freshmen—not that she’s a _ true _ freshman, not with two years of college credits under her belt by the time she finished high school—but one of her TA’s, Betty, put a good word in for her.

“So, there’s a rager tonight over at Sigma Phi Delta. A couple of guys are in the frat,” Darcy says as she wipes down the counter by the register. It’s late afternoon, and there are only a few customers in the shop, spread out in the corners, either behind the glow of a laptop or curled up with a book. “That’s next one for you.”

Jane grimaces. “We already crossed ‘party’ off.” She doesn’t mention the other item that was check-marked that night on Darcy’s “Things Jane Must Do in Order to Become a Normal Human” list.

Darcy imitates a loud game show buzzer. “Wrong. Try again,” she says, tossing the rag toward the small hamper by the back wall. The wet thing lands half on the lid and slips down to the floor. Jane raises an eyebrow, but Darcy is already focused on laying out her mission. “That was like an awkward tween get-together. I mean, yeah, there was some alcohol and some pot—though you refused to partake in the latter.”

“I drank something!” Jane didn’t love it, though—especially when it made her stupid enough to play tonsil hockey with her arch nemesis.

“Yeah, I know.” Darcy rolls her eyes. “And it’s not like I’m saying you _ have _ to smoke or vape a little something-something so you can join the ranks of the initiated. If it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing. I can respect that. But a frat party is another animal.”

“What? More alcohol and drugs and random hook-ups?” Jane levels a flat look at her friend.

“No!” Darcy argues, but then seems to think better of it. “Well, yeah. Kinda. But it depends on the frat. Sigma Phi Delta isn’t like ‘Animal House.’ Come on, Jane. You _ have _ to—just so you can say you did.”

“Why?” Jane asks, though she’s pretty sure it’s another one of those “you only live once” things. Yeah, no thanks. She’s more of the seatbelt-wearing, drive-the-speed-limit kind of YOLO girl. (Unless science is involved, then all bets are off. Because _ science _.)

“Why? _ Why?_” Darcy says, sounding flabbergasted that Jane would even ask. “Because, dude, these are the formative experiences that you’ve been denied. You’re emotionally and socially stunted.”

“Really?” Jane crosses her arms. She may not be a social butterfly, but she’s not Wednesday Addams either.

“Okay, you’re not _ that _ bad,” Darcy relents. “But—and I say this from a place of love—I think maybe you never learned how to have fun. All work and no play leads to you ending up in the psych ward because you stripped naked in the Commons and wrote warp theory all over your body.”

“Oh my _ god _, Darcy!” Jane hisses, cutting a glance around the small shop in the hope that no one overheard that gem.

Darcy spreads her hands. “Man, I’m just calling it like I see it,” she says. “Come to the party tonight. The whole gang is going to be there.”

The _ whole _ gang? Does that mean Loki, too? Jane ducks her head to hide the sudden warmth creeping across her face. She spent a couple of days doing her best to avoid him outside of class, but it turned out to be a wasted effort. Apparently, he’s content to act as if nothing happened last Sunday. And that’s fine. Just _ fine_.

Because she’d rather chew her arm off than be forced to see him again socially.

She picked up an empty tray and rag. “Sorry, gonna have to take a raincheck,” she says with fake disappointment. “Study group tonight.” It’s not a complete lie; she _ is _ going to study.

Darcy’s expression falls in obvious disbelief. “On a Saturday night?”

“Yep.” Jane shrugs.

“Dude, finals are, like, a month away.” Darcy crosses her arms. She’s clearly not buying it.

“Well, you know—nerds are like that.” Jane flashes a smile and steps around the counter. A couple of people have left, and cleaning up after them seems like a better idea than continuing this conversation.

“We’re not done talking about this!” Darcy calls after her.

“Yes, we are!”

* * *

There’s a corner in the library that Jane has claimed as her own. It’s hidden on the third floor behind some stacks that get sporadic traffic. A row of partitioned desks are pressed up against the wall, ending with a small table. That table is hers.

The smooth wooden surface is currently strewn with a half-dozen open books, spiral-bound notebooks, and her laptop. She’s sporting earbuds, but they’re soundless. Wearing them seems to ward off anyone looking to strike up a conversation. (Seriously, who chats in a library? Apparently a lot of people.)

This, she loves. She’s heard of artists talking about the creative process as a compulsion, as necessary and desperate as taking a next breath. Academia is that for her. She doesn’t know how to turn off her passion for learning, for making new connections. Others look at the vast night sky twinkling with stars and see simple beauty. She sees possibilities. A million of them so far beyond reach, and yet beckoning to her like sirens in a dark sea. It lights her up inside.

That’s the high she chases. There’s nothing better. Definitely not a party. Definitely not a make-out session with—

Her cheeks burn before she can finish that dishonest thought. She doesn’t want to admit that _ jerk _ had managed to light her up in an entirely different way. It had to have been an anomaly. She blames the alcohol, the contact high—that and it was the first time she’d been kissed properly. It wasn’t about _ him_, specifically.

Granted, that’s just a theory. The scientific method demands more data, more proof. She’d have to repeat the encounter, this time without the mood altering substances.

No._ No. _ She is _ not _ thinking about locking lips with the devil of Experimental Physics. Never, ever again.

She redoubles her focus on the assignment that isn’t due for another two weeks, reaching for her copy of _ Experiments in Modern Physics _, but she’s startled when it’s yanked out of her hand. She glances up, face simultaneously falling and catching on fire when her gaze lands on the man in question settling opposite her. Loki casually props his booted feet on the table, tips the chair back and leafs through the pages of her book.

Jane grits her teeth. He’s so _ rude_. And worse: after that moment in the closet six days ago, she’s having a hard time _ not _ being aware of how attractive he is—physically. (Like she could ever find his personality attractive. No. Gross.) Somehow his emo look has morphed in her mind into an alluring goth-vampire-rockstar thing. His raven hair is half-tied back, the top hidden beneath a beanie. He wears a threadbare Metallica t-shirt, a dark plaid button-down tied around his waist, and black jeans tucked into a pair of Doc Martens. A few bracelets, leather and hemp, ring loosely around his wrists, and she’s mildly surprised none of them have metal studs. And the black nail polish and that British accent—

_ Stop staring at him! _ It was just one kiss, for crying out loud! And because of her limited experience, she can’t even say definitively that it was that great.

She clears her throat—more to snap herself out of this ridiculous lapse than to get his attention, but he looks up all the same. She narrows her eyes to a glower. “What are you doing here?” she asks too loudly.

He presses a finger to his lips, then mimes taking out an earbud. She forgot she had them in, and it’s a tense beat before she decides to pop them out.

“What are you doing here?” she asks again, this time in a whisper.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t gotten this one yet,” he replies with a nod toward the book he’s stolen. “Didn’t you do the pre-reads?”

She rises, reaching across the table to grab it from him. “Of course, I’ve read it! I’m just using it as a reference for our assignment.” Why is she bothering to explain herself to him?

He makes a derisive sound. “_Experimental Physics: Modern Methods _ is better.”

“Oh, really?” She glares at him as she retrieves her copy of that book beneath a pile of others, and holds it up. “Weird how I already knew that.” She lets both books fall on the table with a soft thump. “You can go away now. Or do I have to fling Holy Water at you to banish you from this realm of innocents.”

He huffs a soft, rasping laugh but annoyingly doesn’t move an inch. “I like you, Foster.”

Liar, she wants to say. If he liked her, he would have made an effort to be a friend. At the very least, he wouldn’t have ignored her all week. Not that she cares. She _ doesn’t_. “That’s too bad,” she returns coolly, “because I don’t like you.” She hates that he brings out the worst in her. She’s normally a nice person. Maybe a little—okay, a lot—awkward and excitable, but _ nice_.

“Are you sure about that?” He raises a brow, tongue grazing his bottom lip as his eyes dip briefly in acute perusal. “You seemed to like me very much last weekend.”

She tramps down the memory of his hands gripping the back of her thighs, his mouth against hers, rough and wet. “You wish.” The words come out breathless, and she wants to bang her forehead against the table.

He smirks and swings his legs down, leaning forward on his elbows. “What else is on the list?”

“What list?”

“The list of things you missed out on from you sheltered upbringing.”

“How do you know about that?” The stunned question rolls off her tongue without thinking, and his mouth stretches in a wide grin. 

“I’m to drag you—kicking and screaming if necessary—to the party tonight,” he says, fishing his phone out of his pocket. “Because, and I quote, ‘Jane’s gotta check that off of her list.’” He unlocks it and holds the screen toward Jane.

She blinks at it, the words bleeding together. Group text? That she’s not a part of, but apparently they’re talking about her? _ Great. _ So he’s only here because Darcy made him come to get her. That’s cool. Whatever.

Loki flips the phone back toward himself, glances down at it. “According to your friend, this is essential for your social development.”

Jane is going to kill Darcy. Kill her _ dead _ . She sent that to the _ entire group! _ “Actually, there have been numerous studies that have shown homeschooled kids are just as capable socially as their public school peers,” Jane replies. “And we tend to do better academically, by the way.” She means that one as a thinly veiled insult of his education, though for all she knows, he could have gone to some stuffy school like Eton. (She doesn’t even know how old he is.)

“If you say so.” He shrugs as if he doesn’t give a damn about her assertions. “Are you coming, or shall we see about checking off something else on your list?”

She snorts. “We? As in _ you _ and me?”

“Well, yes,” he says in a somber tone. “I’m always available to help a friend in need.” 

She snorts again. “We’re not friends.”

His mouth twists in a grin that makes her think of movie villains. “We’ve certainly been friendly, though.”

“Oh, god.” She rolls her eyes, willing away the blush inching up her neck. “Get over it already.”

He tilts his head and studies her with that unsettling smile. “Why? You haven’t.”

She gives serious consideration to hurling one of her textbooks at him. Instead, she stands up and starts gathering her things. “You know what? I’m going to let you off the hook. You can tell Darcy that you couldn’t find me,” she says as she snaps her laptop shut and shoves it in her bag.

He leans back in his seat and cocks a brow. “Where are you going?”

“Wherever you’re not.” She gives him a plastic smile.

“Hm. That’s going to be a problem.”

“Why?”

“Because I plan to be wherever you are tonight.” He stands up, snatching one of her notebooks from the table before she can.

“That’s called stalking.” She makes a swipe for the notebook, but he easily holds it out of her reach. Vertically gifted bastard. “Give it back.”

He doesn’t, of course. Because he isn’t nice. He never has been. “What’s on the list?”

“I don’t have a list,” she says quickly, but her eyes betray her. They jump to the notebook he’s holding hostage, and he doesn’t miss the movement either. Dammit.

“You don’t? Shall we confirm that?” He opens it, flips through the pages as he deftly steps back when she makes another attempt to take it from him. He stops halfway through, and her body blazes from her head to her toes. He clucks his tongue in exaggerated disapproval. “Why Jane Foster, you dirty little liar.”

But she hadn’t lied, not really. Yes, there’s a list, but it’s one that Darcy scribbled in her notebook. None of those ideas were Jane’s. “Give it to me,” she warns through gritted teeth to hide her growing desperation.

“TP-ing a house, sneaking out in the middle of the night,” he reads aloud. “Frat party. What do you know? It _ is _ on the list.” He winks at her.

“Give. It. Back.” Please, _ please. _

“Skinny dipping—oh, I like that one,” he continues on. “Sloppy make-out in the stacks.There’s an idea. We could cross that one off right now.”

“_Loki._”

“And—oh, Foster.” He looks up at her with a feigned mix of shock and pity. “I had no idea you were _ that _ inexperienced. You really do need my help.”

Mortification turns to rage, awakening something feral inside of Jane. She lets out an inhuman screech and launches herself at him, slamming them both into the row of partitioned desks. She wrestles the stupid notebook from him, scrambles away from him. He laughs as she tears the page out and shreds it.

“There. Is. No. List,” she growls, and then throws the notebook in her bag. “Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of and leave me alone—just like you’ve been doing all week.”

Loki straightens, adjusting the t-shirt twisted around his torso. She’s angry with herself that she actually glanced at the flash of a muscular V-line near the waistband of his jeans. God, why can’t people’s looks be directly related to their personality? “Is that why you’re surly?” he asks. “Your feelings were hurt that I didn’t chase after you and beg you for another round?”

She scoffs. “I just told you to _ keep _ ignoring me. I’m surly because you won’t!”

He’s quiet for a beat, studies her with a shrewd look, and she tips her chin up in defiance. Because he’s wrong about her being disappointed by his apathy towards her. If anything, she was relieved. Absolutely. One hundred percent.

“Cross one item off your list with me,” he says. When she opens her mouth to argue, he amends, “Your nonexistent list.”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Come on, Foster.” He takes a step toward her, the corners of his mouth tipping up in a ghost of a smile. There’s a whisper of a dimple in his cheek. She’s determined to hate dimples from now on. And unfairly symmetrical, angular features. And pale eyes that seem to see everything. All of it. “It’s just a bit of fun—harmless, really. I’ll even let you choose which one we do.”

“_ Let _ me?” She glares at him.

He steps another few inches closer, and she has to crane her neck to keep her gaze on his. “Too chicken?”

The dare hangs in the air between them. Why? Why is he being so stubborn about this? She wants to tell him to do unmentionable things to himself and stalk away, but he’s boxed her into a “damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t” no-win scenario _ again _. 

“Fine,” she grinds out. She’s going with the safest bet, the one where she doesn’t actually have to do anything _ with _ him. “Take me to that damn party.”

He gives her a radiant smile—a disturbingly genuine one—as he tugs the strap of her heavy bag out of her hand and slings it over his shoulder. “Let’s go, then.”

* * *

Darcy was right. This is very different from the basement gathering she dragged Jane to last weekend, but at the same time, it’s not nearly as wild as film and television have made frat parties out to be. The house isn’t the opulent mansion with marble pillars that Jane imagined. It’s big, but pretty nondescript otherwise. She wouldn’t have guessed it was the home of Sigma Phi Delta if it weren’t for the sign over the door—and its location.

There are a few scattered groups on the front lawn, holding plastic cups and chatting casually. A few heads turn in their direction as Loki leads her to the entrance, but their gazes slide over her as if she’s invisible. Oh, yeah. This is super fun.

It’s more crowded inside, louder with music and conversation. Loki grasps her hand, drags her through rooms so quickly that she almost has to jog to keep up with his ridiculously long legs. They pass a room where the furniture’s been pushed against the walls to make room for dancing. She’s surprised to catch a glimpse of a live band set up in the corner before Loki tugs her into the kitchen. Someone tries to hand her a cup of something, but she begs off. There’s no way in hell that she’s going to drink when she’s anywhere near Loki.

He swings the back door open and barely has her across the threshold when he collides with a couple headed indoors.

“Shit, man. Watch where you’re going,” mutters the guy brushing away the drink that spilled on his button-down. He looks familiar—average height but handsome, exuding a presence like a neutron star that pulls everyone into his orbit—but Jane can’t place him. His companion is a leggy brunette who could be a Victoria’s Secret model. 

The guy’s expression turns sour when his gaze lands on Loki. “Great. My Chemical Romance has come out of his lair and it’s not even a full moon.” He gives Jane a cursory glance, eyes pausing briefly on her hand in Loki’s. “Where’s Lorelei? Or did you trade her in for a newer model?” He glances at Jane again. “No offense snack-size, I’m sure you’re a great gal.”

Jane’s stomach churns at the mention of another girl associated with Loki. Probably because the idea of anyone wanting to put up with the egotistical bully is rank. Yeah. That’s it.

Loki’s fingers curl painfully tight around hers, though he huffs a soft laugh. “How’s Pepper?” he asks the other guy. “Still keeping the poor girl on ice while you sleep your way through Greek row?”

That wipes the smug look from the other guy’s face. (Where does Jane know him from?) “You know what? You don’t get to talk about her,” he warns in a low voice. “Screw you, Laufeyson.”

Loki gives him an answering smile that borders on psychotic. “Only in your wildest dreams, Stark.” 

That’s right! He’s Tony Stark. The genius playboy who has more money than the gross national product of most small countries. And he’s very obviously not a Loki fan. Shocker.

Loki doesn’t wait for a comeback from Tony, but yanks Jane away as he makes a beeline for the hot tub at the far end of the pool.

“You should write a book on how to win friends and influence people,” she says sarcastically. “You’ve got a special gift.”

He rolls his eyes. “Stark is a spoiled, narcissistic arsehole.”

“Takes one to know one.”

He glances at her, and she prepares herself for a biting retort. But he laughs instead, an authentic, full-body thing with_out _ a contemptuous edge to it, and it’s weird. “Maybe, Foster. Maybe.”

Before she can ask why he’s acting not-mean, she hears her name being called. Darcy waves at her from the hot tub. The girl is squeezed between some of the gang from last week’s get-together, and Jane’s not entirely sure that’s a bikini she’s wearing. There’s way too much lace on that red top.

“You’re here!” Darcy exclaims. “Look, Jane’s here!”

The rest of the group gives Jane the same kind of “yeah, cool, whatever” greetings they gave her last time. She returns it with a perfunctory wave and a smile that doesn’t quite make it to her eyes.

“I knew he’d convince you to come.” Darcy glances to the handsome blond next to her. What was his name again? Mandy? Randy? Fandy—_Fandral_. “Didn’t I tell you he would? You owe me a raunchy strip-tease.”

Fandral laughs. “I do. I should have known better than to bet against you,” he says. “Will you be wanting that right now or…” He stands up and hooks his fingers into his—yep, those are definitely boxer briefs.

The others jeer and splash water at him until he laughs again and settles back down next to Darcy, draping an arm across her shoulders. Jane lets out the breath that was trapped in her chest in apprehension. It’s becoming painfully obvious that she’s not chill enough to hang with these people.

“Get in here!” Darcy says to Jane, gesturing toward the tub. The movement is a little sloppy, and by the cups littered on the concrete nearby, the girl has probably had more than a few.

“That’s okay.” Jane takes a step back. She is not going to strip down to her underwear—a sensible plain white bra and a pair of boy shorts, striped with grey and teal—in front of these people, least of all Loki. “It’s already full.”

“No, it’s not,” Darcy argues. “I can sit on Fandy’s lap.” She scoots over with Fandral’s help.

“And Gamora can sit on mine,” one of the big guys says—Peter, if Jane remembers right.

Gamora rolls her eyes and stays exactly where she’s at on the opposite side, elbows bent back over the lip of the tub.

“There’s room on my lap,” Thor says with a wink, and it takes a second for Jane to realize his offer is for her rather than the gorgeous cool girl that Peter is clearly ga-ga over.

Loki’s hand nearly crushes Jane’s; she’s forgotten that he was still holding it. “I think she’d rather have mine.”

A wave of heat swells over Jane. She hates that her body so readily agrees with his statement. She needs to get away from him, from them and their boundary pushing shenanigans. 

“Actually,” Jane says, disentangling her fingers from Loki’s. “Where’s the bathroom?”

A couple of people rattle off conflicting directions, and Darcy starts to rise up from her perch on Fandral’s lap. “If you wait just a second, I’ll come with you.”

Jane shakes her head. “Stay. I can find it, thanks.”

She heads back toward the house without making any promises to return. She’s not. She’s going to find a safe place to hole-up until she can get an Uber or whatever. She’ll send Darcy a text, and that will be that. Frat party checked off. 

Someone tries to hand her a drink again when she crosses through the kitchen, and for a heartbeat, she’s seriously tempted. As much as she wants to pretend that she’s unaffected by recent events, that walking away from Loki meant leaving behind the unwelcome flutters he inspires in her middle, her stupid brain won’t stop reminding her of spearmint flavor of his tongue, his searing breath as he came in for more.

Stop. Stop. It.

She does grab a drink—one that she watched poured from the keg before it was passed to her. Because as naive as she is about many things, she knows about stranger danger, especially when alcohol is involved.

But god. Why do people drink this stuff? It tastes _ so _ bad. She makes a face, but drinks the rest, tosses the cup in the garbage bag hanging from a nearby doorknob. The buzz starting to prickle under her skin is weaker than the one she had last weekend. It softens the tension in her muscles, but doesn’t take her to a place of rubbery complacency. That’s probably a good thing. Because the latter got her into more trouble than she can handle.

“Jane? Jane Foster, right?”

She turns, searching for the source of the question. The room is loud, the band in full swing with an enthusiastic audience. When her gaze passes over a guy sitting on one of the couches pushed against the wall, he lifts a hand and stands. She blinks, and then she recognizes him. She steps closer to him.

“Bruce.” She practically has to shout over the music. “From Plasma Waves.” He’s always quiet in class, but they often tie for top grades. Sometimes he even beats her, but she’s not bothered when it happens. Not much, anyway. Not like she is in Experimental Physics when—nope. Not going there. 

Bruce smiles, and it’s nice. Not smug, not suggestive like some else that she is absolutely not thinking about.

“This doesn’t seem like your kind of thing.” Bruce nods toward the writhing, gyrating mass on the makeshift dance floor. 

She raises her brows. Does she give off a “I’d rather stay home and catch up on the latest from the Hubble telescope while listening to the Star Trek soundtrack” vibe? “I was coerced into coming,” she admits.

“Me too,” he says with a soft laugh that she can’t hear. “But they kinda ditched me.”

She opens her mouth to confess that she’s the one doing the ditching, but the words get stuck in her throat when she catches a glimpse of Loki in her periphery. He stands several feet away, his expression hard, almost predatory. She has to actively fight the gravitational force that draws her toward him—and the unnatural thrill skittering beneath her skin. If magic were an actual thing, she’d think this was some kind of sorcery. She’s starting to regret having that drink now.

“You wanna dance?” Jane says to Bruce. “We should dance.” She grabs his hand and pulls him to the middle of the room.

“Oh, okay,” he says with another laugh.

Bruce is a terrible dancer, but he’s a good sport, grinning as he shuffles from side to side offbeat. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his arms. It’s adorable. This is the kind of guy Jane’s always imagined herself falling for: cute, nerdy like her, endearingly awkward. She _ wants _ to like him that way, but she doesn’t have to lock lips with him to know that it’d be like kissing a cousin. She can have fun anyway, right? Darcy would be proud. Jane closes her eyes and lets the music wash over her.

She opens them again sometime later when a pair of hands curl at her side and yank her backward. She yelps when her butt meets her partner’s groin. She spins to tell Bruce that she’s not interested bumping and grinding with him, but it isn’t Bruce. It’s Loki. She whips her head around to search for her new acquaintance, and he’s backing away with an apology written on his face.

She whirls back around. “Are you serious? What did I say about leaving me alone?” She needs him to, to save her from another episode of pure insanity.

Loki stares down at her, and it’s so fiery that she could melt into a puddle on the spot. A month ago, she believed that “chemistry” between people was a farce dreamed up by romance novelists. There was no such thing in her world. But now… This? This is Berthollet’s salt and red phosphorus. This is _ combustion _. 

“With _ me _,” he says, and she knows he’s referencing the agreement they made earlier in the library.

“And then you go back to ignoring me?” she asks. Her airy voice barely carries over the din, and a part of her hopes he won’t hear her. 

He does, though. His mouth curves up in a smile that’s nowhere near nice. It does things to her. She hates those things. No, wrong. She loves those things like an addict loves the high. She hates that it’s _ him _ doing them.

She has to get out of here before she loses her mind, before she climbs his tall frame and attacks his face with her lips. She pushes through the crowd, not caring about direction—any will do as long as it’s away from him.

There is a wrong direction, though, and Jane curses when she realizes that she’s somehow gone deeper into the house instead of toward one of the exits. She curses again when she glances over her shoulder to find Loki hot on her heels.

He catches her hand, but instead of pulling her back to him, he steps around her, tugs her behind him as he climbs a staircase. She tries to wrench her hand out of his, but his grip is too strong.

“Hey!” she demands. “Let go!”

It’s quieter, _ empty _ up here, and she should be nervous, terrified even. Especially when he opens one of the doors in the hallway _ with a key _ and nudges her inside. Her heart is pounding against her ribcage, but it’s not fear making it unsteady. Not when he locks the door behind them, and leans on the frame, facing away from her. Not when the flick of a light switch reveals a room that she knows instinctively is _ his_.

Bookshelves, bursting with a hodge-podge of paperbacks and hardcovers, span one of the walls and half of another. More books are stacked on the nightstand, on the desk by the window. The rest of the decor is simple, a neatly made bed that doesn’t look quite big enough to be queen-sized, a guitar sitting in a stand in the corner, a couple of posters tacked on the wall—one of a band she’s never heard of, another of the Sombrero galaxy, the same one she hung up in her dorm room at the beginning of the year. She has an irrational urge to tear it down as soon as she gets home.

The room is so normal, uncomfortably familiar. She doesn’t know what she expected his place to look like, something more diabolical. Like the Phantom of the Opera’s lair. 

“I broke up with my girlfriend,” Loki murmurs, drawing her attention back to him. He’s turned around, back against the door, looking haggard as if he’s been in a battle and lost.

She frowns, remembering the snide comment Tony made at Loki downstairs. What was that name? “Lorelei.”

Loki hums an acknowledgement. “Last night.”

“Why are you telling me this?” She thinks she knows, but she’s hoping that he’ll disprove her theory. He has to. She doesn’t want to feel this for him. She doesn’t want to want him.

“You’re right, you know. I was ignoring you,” he says, pushing off the door and moving toward her in slow footfalls. He breathes a quiet laugh, an oddly rueful one. “I was _ trying _ to ignore you. Then I realized that I don’t want to.”

Everything comes alive inside of her with his confession, and it’s too much. The heat, the frenetic anticipation spinning in her middle in a violent whirlpool of desire—desire that she didn’t know she was capable of feeling. She’s almost nauseated by the intensity of it. When his eyes slide from hers, stopping at her mouth, instinct tells her there’s only one cure for this madness.

She grabs a fistful of his shirt and drags him down to her level. He comes as willingly as last time, maybe even eagerly, and then it’s a clash of lips, brutal and devouring. There _ is _ relief from that want eating her alive, but it’s fleeting, overrun by another blazing tide. This one more demanding as he growls against her mouth, as he picks her up again, fitting her legs around his hips. She tangles her fingers in his hair, tugs on it in an attempt to draw him somehow closer, kiss him harder, deeper.

Reality comes crashing back to her when her back touches the cool comforter on his bed, when his lips and tongue make a trail from her mouth to her neck. And oh god, she almost gives into the fire in her veins, almost lets this encounter take its natural course.

No. Not like this. Not with him. She’s not some doe-eyed girl waiting for a fairytale prince before she crosses this milestone, but she wants it to be more than some random frat party hook-up. “Stop.” She grasps his shoulders. “I can’t.”

He props himself up, searches her face before his head dips in a brief nod. He gets it. He’s seen the list, and something bubbly and warm bursts in her chest as he steps down from the bed and helps her up. She’s going to call it gratitude.

He takes her face in his hands and gives her a lingering kiss before pressing his forehead to hers, exhaling a deep sigh. “You’d better go.” He retreats from her, cracks the door open.

She runs her hand through her hair, straightens her shirt and walks toward the exit he’s giving her. She pauses at the threshold, looks back at him feeling like she’s supposed to say something. What, though? Thank you for that steamy make-out? Thank you for not trying to talk me into doing something I’m not ready for yet? Is he going to pretend this never happened when they run into each other in class on Monday? (Does she want him to?)

He speaks before she can cobble together some kind of response. “This isn’t over,” he says, and against all reason, she likes the promise written between his words. “That list is mine.”

She scoffs, but her heart isn’t in it, not really. “There’s no list.”

He bares his teeth in a slow grin. “Oh, yes there is. You’re going to cross off every item with me.”

The air between them is too thick to breathe, and she has to force out a retort. “You wish.”

He places a finger under her chin, tips it up and brushes his lips over hers. The kiss is almost tender, comfortable like they belong. She’s unsettled by it. She wants more of it.

“Good night, Jane,” he murmurs.

Outside in the vacant hallway, after his door latches shut, she runs a hand over her face with a groan. What was she thinking?

This is bad—so, _ so _ bad.

**~FIN~**


	21. Gold and Glory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olympian Jane Foster isn't happy to have a run-in with Track & Field's bad boy, Loki Odinson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** T  
**Genre:** Non-magical AU, Olympics AU  
**Prompt:** rosalysaoirse sent the following prompt on Tumblr: _“Lokane. Gold and Glory.”_

**GOLD AND GLORY**

Jane ran into him on her second day in the Olympic Village. She hadn’t planned to be out so late, but her roommate decided to take advantage of the “free love” environment that night. Qualifiers were a couple of days off, otherwise Jane would have put her foot down. Instead, she grabbed her copy of _An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics_ and left Darcy to her hook-up with some Don Juan from Great Britain’s archery team.

She settled on a small couch in a corner of the nearest lounge. Fortunately the place was quiet at this time. The televisions were muted, and aside from the pair playing a half-hearted game of table tennis, the smattering of athletes had their noses pointed to phones or laptops, earbuds in. Jane checked her watch. Two hours was all she was giving her roommate, then she was taking her dorm room back. She wanted to hit the gym early tomorrow to refine her balance beam routine. Her landing was still a bit wobbly.

It didn’t take long for her to get lost in the book. Lately, she’d been toying with the idea of retiring from Gymnastics after this year. The sport wasn’t exactly kind to the body; she’d collected more injuries in her twenty-one years than people twice her age. Most of them had been minor, but these days, a hard landing was more jarring than it used to be. She wasn’t interested in becoming the next Oksana Chusovitina, not when she had another passion to fall back on: science.

She involuntarily glanced up when the door swung open and immediately wished she hadn’t. She raised the book to her face, stealing another look over the pages. Yep, it was him. There was no mistaking that dark hair framing pale, aristocratic features. Loki Odinson, the infamous bad boy of Track and Field who moonlighted in the world of Parkour. No, wait. He was going by Laufeyson now after some horrible falling out with his family.

Not that Jane cared about him or his career. The little she did know was thanks to the earful Darcy gave her on the trip here, all about her list of “Dudes I’d Totally Bang.” Loki made the top five—along with his brother, Thor, a wrestler. As Darcy went on and on, Jane made unintelligible noises, but otherwise kept her opinions to herself.

Because she’d cross paths with him before, four years ago at the last Olympics, though she’d never told anyone.

She was barely out of high school then—as much as you can call being educated by private tutors so it didn’t interfere with her training schedule “high school”—and not yet eighteen. High on USA taking gold in the team all-around, she’d let Darcy talk her into sneaking away from their chaperone to celebrate. There weren’t really parties in the Village, but still, it had felt exhilarating to have a night to herself. No coaches, no parents, no babysitters. She thought she was so grown up, especially with the makeover that Darcy had given her.

Loki had been younger then too, in his early twenties, raven curls barely reaching the nape of his neck. He was wild, unpredictable, _fun_. And more. She shut away the memory, tried to return to her reading, but her gaze kept drifting to him as he surveyed the lounge. He was different, not only broader in the shoulders and hair long enough now to tie back in a knot. It was those eyes. Years ago, there had been a broken vulnerability written in them, the kind that had a naive teen secretly wishing she could make it all better—whatever “it” was. But now? Now she saw only cold calculation.

Maybe that was how he’d always been. She’d learned the hard way that he was a champion liar. All the more reason to avoid him like the—

_Dammit._

He’d seen her. His mouth stretched in a wide smile, tongue grazing briefly across his bottom lip as he made his way to her. She rolled her eyes and, in a pointed motion, brought the book up higher, hoping he’d get the message. That her middle came alive with tiny flutters was merely leftovers from when she stupidly believed everything that fell from his silver tongue.

“If it isn’t my favorite gymnast,” he said. His voice had changed too, a little deeper, a little raspier. Still rudely British. “Jane Foster. It’s been far too long.”

She snorted, but refused to look at him. To her chagrin, the couch dipped next to her, and she heaved a sigh, redoubling her effort to read the same paragraph for the second time.

He clucked his tongue at her attempt to ignore him, and the cushions shifted again, his long arm stretching uncomfortably close to her. He definitely had that same crisp, wintery scent. A beat passed in tense silence before he snatched the book out of her hands.

He flipped through it, losing her place. “Thinking of trading in your leotards for a lab coat, little bird?”

She scowled at the nickname he’d give her back then. _My little bird soars through the air in grace and beauty._ “That’s none of your business.”

“Oh, why so fractious?” Loki splayed his long fingers against his chest, pretending to be hurt by her curt tone. “I’m only making friendly conversation.”

“Maybe you should make it somewhere else,” Jane said with a flat look.

He grinned, dimples hinting in his cheeks. “But I much prefer the company I already have, even if it’s a bit prickly.”

Jane made a noise of disgust. “You just don’t quit, do you?” She grabbed the book from him, snapped it shut, and rose to her feet. “Tell Lorelei that she can sic her boy toy on me all she wants, but I’m not going to fall for it. I’m taking the gold in the all-around this time.”

Loki laughed softly, not bothering to deny her accusation. “I like that fire,” he said with an appreciative hum. “You can’t get rid of me that easily, little bird. You made me a promise.”

She scoffed, heat rushing to face. How dare he bring _that_ up! And after what he’d done. The gall of this guy! “In your dreams.”

“Oh, yes,” he agreed, gaze dropping in blatant perusal of her.

She hated the onslaught of unwanted memories, of her head against his chest as they talked about nothing and everything, of his mouth on hers, exploring and then devouring, fingers knotted in the hem of her shirt as if he were keeping them from wandering where she wasn’t ready for them to be. _If you wait just a little longer_, she’d told him, _I promise it will be worth it_. She hated the way that bald hunger in his eyes still made her stomach flip in kinetic anticipation.

How was it that the one person she was insanely attracted to—_physically_ attracted to—was the biggest self-absorbed jerk on the planet?

She really didn’t need this right now, not before the games.

“Whatever, Loki,” she said. “Don’t trip on a hurdle this week.” She spun on her heal and made for the door, anxious to get out of his oppressive orbit before she did something idiotic like fall for his charms again.

“Don’t worry about me, darling,” he called to her retreating back. “I always get what I’m going after.”

* * *

Loki grinned as Jane yanked the door open with a huff and stepped out into the damp night. It would have been so easy to correct her erroneous assumptions about what transpired four years ago. He could have told her that his ex, Lorelei, had ambushed him with that kiss, that she’d taken a photo of it without his knowledge. He could have told Jane that he’d never conspired with her rival, and by the time he learned of what Lorelei had done to shake Jane’s confidence, his favorite gymnast had already left the Village. All he had was a scathing note that she’d slipped under his door.

He could have told her too that his life had imploded shortly after, that the dust from the fallout had settled only recently, and that was why he hadn’t sought her out to set the record straight.

But as he leaned back in the cushions of this abominably uncomfortable couch, he decided that it would be so much more fun to get her to fall for him while she still believed him to be an unremitting bastard.

After all, what kind of runner would he be if he didn’t like the chase?

**~FIN~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** Thank you so much for reading! If you have a minute, I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	22. [32] Knight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After more than a thousand years, the Aesir have returned to Midgard, and Loki, the cunning prince of the Realm Eternal, has been given a special task—one that doesn't bode well for Jane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rating:** T  
**Genre:** Alternate Universe  
**Prompt:** Fookasu221 requested "32. Knight" from the [100 Prompts list](https://therealstartraveller776.tumblr.com/post/627791266855452672) for Lokane.
> 
> **A/N:** This is a complete AU where none of the events from the Thor and Avengers films have happened.

**[32] KNIGHT**

Loki stands next to Thor, doing a champion job of not rolling his eyes as his brother reads the Allfather’s proclamation to the mortals. Midgard. Such a middling world. Hardly worthy of Realm Eternal’s attention, let alone a full annex. The Aesir are swearing to protect these weak creatures, keep them safe. Blah. Blah. Blah. In truth, Odin cares very little for the mortals. Midgard is a strategic staging ground for the ongoing war with Svartalfheim, nothing more.

By the horrified, outraged expressions of the frail beings before Loki, they aren’t particularly keen on being ruled by the gods they’d forgotten long ago. What had his father expected, that they’d all bow in willing supplication? He breathes out a thin sigh. He’ll have to subdue the simpletons with his troop of skilled warriors, the Knights of Gungnir—the Allfather’s Hand. Thor will deal with the leaders of this realm as Odin’s Mouthpiece. They’ve already taken over all communication—it was deplorably simple—and every word spoken by the crown prince is being broadcast worldwide even now.

As soon as Thor finishes the proclamation, the crowd before them erupts in loud, incensed complaint. Oh, yes. They will have to be brought to kneel. Loki shares a look with his brother, the corners of Thor’s mouth tipping up in a poorly concealed anticipatory grin. And everyone thinks Loki to be the dark prince, that _he_ is the one consumed by the thrill of conflict. Battles, however, are only a means to end for him. He doesn’t thirst for blood; his appetites lie elsewhere. But let others believe what they may. That serves his purposes just as well.

“I’ve got this,” Thor says over the increasing roar of visceral protests. “You know your task.”

Loki rolls his eyes then. Odin has ordered him on a page boy’s errand, to seek out the mortal who had somehow sent a beacon through the branches of Yggdrasil, however briefly. That was terribly unwise. From what Loki has seen of Midgardian military prowess—or decided lack thereof—they are hardly prepared to enter the hostile universe, not without bringing utter annihilation down upon themselves. Loki’s irksome task is to stop this brash imbecile from further garnering the attention of the other realms. Svartalfheim in particular.

He nods to two of his most accomplished knights and leaves the others to his brother’s command. Theoric and Lorelei fall into step behind Loki as he lifts his hands, pressing them together and then pushing them apart to open a waygate to a barren wilderness. He ignores the gasps from nearby mortals and steps through onto the arid landscape, his knights on his heels. The waygate closes behind them, and yes. _There._ He can sense it through the seidr coursing through his veins, the very magic that stitches together all of reality. There’s a filament that has been unraveled and rewoven, a miniscule disruption in the order of things. It hints of the same tang of the Bifrost. His mouth twitches with a grim smile. This mortal has unwittingly stumbled onto something _very_ dangerous.

Loki traverses the main road of a village in a slow decay from the elements. Midgardians watch him pass with his knights, most not bothering to challenge his presence. Those few who seem to have a trace of foolhardy courage shrink back when he levels each with a cold smile, silently daring them to test his patience. The trail ends at a squat, round building in the same state of neglect as the rest of the village. The walls are made of glass, but his gaze rises to find a gleaming metallic device on its roof. Clever. He could almost commend the determined ingenuity behind its design. Pity that creativity has been wasted on a lifespan which will last little more than a blink in the Realm Eternal.

“Let me dispatch the insects for you, my lord,” Lorelei murmurs at his shoulder. “And I will destroy the beacon.”

“Careful, Lorelei,” he warns. “Your unbridled ambition will be your undoing. The task was given to _me_.” In a year or a thousand, she will finally realize that she can never do enough, never _be_ enough to please him, and he’ll have to slip a blade between her ribs when she inevitably betrays him out of spite.

Theoric is an unremitting bore, but Loki can count on his loyalty.

He yanks open the door. Inside, three mortals huddle together, an older man with two young women, staring at a screen that displays the Knights of Gungnir quelling riots. An insipid female voice describes the scene as if the viewers are too dull to understand what’s happening. Perhaps they are.

One of the young women—the one with darker hair and a figure that Fandral would compose an ode to as he charmed her into his bed—sees the three uninvited guests, eyes growing round with fear.

“Uh, guys,” she says to her companions. “_Guys!”_

“Darcy, what is…” the man begins with irritation in his tone, but his words die off when he discovers what has her transfixed with mounting terror.

“Oh my God,” the other female breathes. She’s petite as well, slender with delicate features. But there’s intelligence in her sable gaze. Loki suspects that she is his target rather than the man. He’s already dismissed the buxom brunette.

He stretches his mouth in a wide smile. “Well, yes,” he agrees, stepping forward. “I am your god.”

Duly cowed, Darcy and the nameless man retreat, but not the other young woman. No, steel edges in the clench of her jaw, in the glower she aims at him. Without warning, she charges him, swinging her fist at his face, a movement he doesn’t bother to block. She can’t bring him any real harm, but he admires the attempt, futile though it was.

“Get off my planet!” she demands through gritted teeth.

Oh, he _likes_ that fire.

But then Lorelei is on the wisp, dagger point pressed against her neck. “How dare you lay a hand on Prince Loki of Asgard,” she bites out. “You will die for your insolence!”

“Lorelei,” he says in a low voice. He ticks a finger, and confusion wars with frustration on his knight’s face. But she obeys, releasing the woman as she steps back to his side. He turns his attention back to his quarry. “What is your name, mortal?”

The woman brushes the hair from her face, squares her shoulders. “Jane Foster.” Ah, so she can be brought to heel. But then she adds, “I don’t recognize your authority here.”

Lorelei reaches for her blade again, but Loki stills her with a raised hand. He’s finding this exchange rather amusing. He wants to play.

“I’m impressed. Such bravery when facing an infinitely superior opponent,” he says, closing in on Jane Foster with languid steps. “But you would do well not to offend your sovereign protectors.”

She scoffs. “You’re talking about that proclamation from your king? It’s nothing but pretty lies from an invading warlord.”

Loki grins. Pretty lies from the Allfather, indeed. She seems to have been graced with an uncanny intellect for her kind. “Invading? Why, Jane Foster, you _invited_ us.” Not precisely true; her beacon merely accelerated plans already in motion.

Her brows draw together in a fascinating blend of consternation and disbelief. “How?” she balks.

He glances up toward the ceiling, to the machine on the roof, and in the next beat, her breath catches in apparent understanding. “Foolish Midgardian,” he murmurs, “_you_ are to blame for the plight of your realm.” Another manipulation of the truth, but he wants to see if that will finally splinter her iron resolve.

Horror washes over her face, but it’s fleeting, replaced by abject defiance. “No,” she argues, shaking her head. “Maybe I did get your attention with my test, but I didn’t make you monsters. You already were.”

Yes, he _very much_ likes this. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have time to make a proper game of it—not yet. He tilts his head toward Theoric. “Take her. She comes with us.”

The other mortals find their voices then, raising desperate objections—though they lack the mettle to do more than that. Pathetic. Jane struggles impotently against Theoric as he grabs her arm. At least she _tries_.

Loki sends his other knight to demolish the device, and that, remarkably, is what elicits panic from the intractable Jane Foster.

“No!” she yells, vainly twisting in Theoric’s grasp. “I built that! It’s irreplaceable!”

Loki laughs softly. What an intriguing little thing she is. He pretends he doesn’t witness her snatch a small journal from a nearby table as she’s dragged out of the building with them. Let her have her trinket. It’s worthless where she’s going.

“Shall I put her in the catacombs, sire?” Theoric asks.

“No,” Loki replies. “Bring her to the queen. She’ll keep watch over the mortal until I return.”

“What are going to do with me?” Jane asks. She’s afraid, but hiding it well behind a venomous glare.

Loki doesn’t answer her immediately but considers her in lazy perusal. She’s so small, terribly fragile, and yet, he suspects this new toy of his isn’t breakable. Such an unexpected bounty, this.

“I haven’t decided,” he confesses with an impish grin. “But, oh, what _fun_ we’re going to have together.”

**~FIN~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** Thank you so much for reading! If you have a moment, I'd love to hear your thoughts!


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